For the entirety of his career so far, there has been some consternation over Ryan Coogler’s gifts as a director. His major debut Fruitvale Station was admirable and exciting, but was also a classic first-time director indie film. Creed was a lightening rod moment: the revitalization of a dormant and dead-seeming IP in Rocky, the comeback of Sylvester Stallone, serious actor, and the validation of both Coogler and his muse Michael B. Jordan as Hollywood mainstays. But it is IP, and it is as much about the Rocky formula as it is about the filmmakers. And, obviously, there were Marvel’s Black Panther films, which for all of their virtues remain Marvel films. Coogler, like a lot of talented, capable young filmmakers, got quickly nabbed up by the Hollywood system, and good for him, but there has always been a question about what he can do with his own purely original work. Finally, with Sinners, Coogler has put his decade of experience behind his own idea.
Sinners tells the story of twin brothers Elijah ‘Smoke’ Moore and Elias ‘Stack’ Moore (both played by Michael B. Jordan), bootlegging gangsters and WWI veterans returning home to the Mississippi Delta from Chicago in 1932. It’s the opening of their new juke joint built out on former Klan property, and they plan to start off strong with music from their little cousin, Sammie aka Preacher Boy (Miles Caton), and local blues legend Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo). They have also employed Smoke’s former lover Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) and Chinese shopkeepers Grace and Bo Chow (Li Jun Li and Yao, respectively). But later on in the night, everyone there gets more than they bargained for when the power of the blues seems to open a portal to hell and attract a legion of vampires, lead by Irish immigrant Remmick (Jack O’Connell), who systematically picks off the entire party in pursuit of Preacher Boy and his ability to commune with the ancestral spirit through his music.
