Some movies seek to scare. Others, to get under your skin. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, first screened at Sundance earlier this year, is the latter kind of film. Conjuring the Deep South in all its heat, music, and memory, the movie is a midnight sermon for the age of waking, a horror tale gasped out between clutches of air. It’s horror not as a novelty but an inheritance, a story about power and survival and the long American tradition of draining blood in the name of salvation.
Review by Allan R. Ellenberger
Following his revision of the franchise model with Creed and Black Panther, Coogler now tries his hand at something trickier and more intimate: an original, genre-bending fever dream that refuses to stay in one box. Critics responded with near-unanimous praise for its ambition and execution, while audiences met it with an enthusiasm that's almost unheard of for a dark, R-rated horror hybrid. Sinners didn't just open well—it made itself known as a cultural event, the kind of film people argue about because it dares to try more than comfort allows.
The concept has the framework of a grindhouse horror but the heart of an epic. Michael B. Jordan is at the center of a cast that also features Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, Jack O’Connell, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, and an arresting newcomer, Miles Caton. Vampirism is less gothic affectation and more social metaphor - an old system with new costumes, preying on communities already hardened by history to expect betrayal. Coogler humanizes monsters not by alienating them but by rendering them as part of the machine, charming and seductive and brutally efficient.
Visually, it is a fearless, tactile film, glistening with sweat, firelight, and kinetic energy. Coogler stages his set pieces with a muscular confidence, synthesizing horror, action, and historical drama into something at once operatic and feral. Music is the film’s lifeblood. Ludwig Göransson’s score, an evocation of blues and gospel, of percussive dread, gives Sinners its pulse, letting scenes swell, seduce, and then snap without warning. The film moves with the momentum of a piece of music—sometimes hypnotic, sometimes punishing.
The force of Jordan is at the center. He offers film-star command undercut with weariness and ethical stress, humanizing the film's larger concepts in terms of their toll. It's the kind of performance that is both mythical and excruciatingly personal and has already set him up as a legitimate contender for awards consideration. And as we start to hear whispers, Sinners could be in the mix for not only Jordan but Coogler's directorial efforts, Göransson's music, cinematography and even perhaps Best Picture, particularly as the Academy has shown a willingness to include genre films of cultural significance in recent years.
Still, Sinners is not without its flaws. Its ambition occasionally outpaces its discipline. The pacing can swell and sag, and certain editorial choices blur emotional through-lines that might otherwise land with greater force. A few character arcs feel sketched rather than fully excavated. Yet these missteps feel less like failures than side effects of excess—a film reaching too far rather than settling for safety.
In the end, that balancing act is what gives Sinners its weight. It is a dizzying, audacious visual feast, a bold genre-bender held together by Michael B. Jordan’s powerhouse performance and a surprisingly daring blend of horror, action, and historical epic. Dropped pacing, clunky editing, and some unexplored emotional punches mitigate the accolades, but do not undercut the film’s central power. What remains are its ideas — of faith as currency, of tyranny as custom, of identity as earned, not given.
In the end, Sinners is a reminder of what movies used to be like when they were big enough to gamble on something, and big enough to suffer the consequences. It's not perfect, but it's vital, it's dangerous, and it's completely heartfelt. And in a season of sterilized but soulless prestige product, maybe that's the reason why it matters—and why it's starting to resonate with awards voters.
What did Sinners leave you feeling—thrilled, unsettled, or divided—share your thoughts and reactions in the comments below.
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