Twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan in an amazing dual performance) return to 1930s Mississippi from Chicago to buy an old mill from a racist white man and turn it into a juke joint where their young cousin Preacher Boy Sammie (Miles Caton in a star making role) hopes to make his debut singing the blues. Along for the ride is a legion of well-drawn characters including the grandfatherly Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo in a career topping turn), the earthy and wise Annie (a revelatory Wunmi Musaku) and the femme fatale Mary (a seductive but sympathetic Hailee Steinfeld, who if someone were to make my 1930s set novel Then Came Darkness into a film today I would want cast as Evelyn Kydd).

It’s a rare treat to see a raw talent put to screen exactly what they always dreamed of. It typically happens when an auteur finds some early praise, plays the Hollywood game successfully, and then gets to hold all the cards and bring a signature vision to life. Spielberg did it with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Nolan did it with Inception. And now Ryan Coogler does it with Sinners. What’s so fascinating about Sinners, is that although I’ve been a fan of Coogler since Fruitvale Station and enjoyed Creed and Blank Panther, I didn’t think he had something like this in him. Hell, I didn’t think anybody had something like this in them.

The genre blending and the layers are as astute as they are astounding. The film starts as a historical drama, pivots into a musical Southern Gothic, and then morphs into a rip-roaring horror thriller where vampirism is a metaphor for cultural appropriation and assimilation. Packed into this is subtext and symbolism channeling the history of America through the lens of the Black experience. In many ways it’s a spiritual sequel to Toni Morrison’s literary exorcism of colonial America, A Mercy.

In this context erupts a writing, directing, and acting tour de force enabled by a technical team summoning both their angels and demons. We get to witness things we rarely see. Villains, innocents, and all the troubled souls in between are given agency. Women are depicted as complex and sensual and desirable without being objectified thanks to the lens of a brilliant female cinematographer (Autumn Durald Arkapaw). And most vividly, music grinds into your bones while lifting your soul up into the sky.

Sinners is also that special kind of film that tells you exactly what’s going to happen in the opening voice-over, yet it still surprises at every turn.

Music, specifically the blues, can conjure not only some good spirits, but also lure in some evil. When that evil does come knocking on the door of the juke joint, it’s an absolute thrill. The musical scene that precedes it – a spiritual whirlwind tracking shot of pulse-pounding dancing and song – is one for the ages. It’s like Coogler opens up a portal, and when it harkens not only ancestral spirits but also future ones, you can’t help but be transfixed and want in on it…like them damn vampires outside the walls. Their leader is burning the walls down in his mind to get inside…to feel…to touch…to eat…to commune.

Later, as the melee crescendos, that vampire leader (Jack O’Connell, damn creepy) confesses to Preacher Boy Sammie, “I want your stories, I want your songs.” It’s possibly the most chilling thing ever uttered by a cinematic vampire, because in that moment I saw myself, a white audience member, who has been mesmerized by every note of the film, every beat of the thrills, my seat literally jumping to the music bouncing off the IMAX screen, and longing for the same thing. I want. I want. I want. The film posits we are all sinners, but I am the vampire.

The collective audience longs to break that veil, like the voice-over tells us only the music can do, and commune. Coogler let’s all do that in Sinners. And in possibly the most daring aspect of his storytelling and spirit conjuring, he finds a redemption arc for every one of us sinners and vampires. I won’t say much on the coda, or the post-credits sequence, except it’s a gift. A kindness. A mercy.

Sinners is rare thing indeed. We should all feel blessed to commune with it. But even more so than the rush of experiencing it is the legacy it’s already building…all the conversations it engenders, all the creativity that will blossom from it. Let’s just hope all those future stories and songs don’t suck the life from it.

Review by D. H. Schleicher