'Sinners' Review: A Haunting, Soulful Ode to Black Music and the Vampires Who Feed on It

From the first shot of Sinners, you know you're in for something soul-stirring. A young man, soaked in blood and clutching a shattered guitar, stumbles into a church full of worshippers. His name is Sammie (played by newcomer Miles Caton in a revelatory performance), and his story is one of pain, beauty, and transformation. So too is Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Ryan Coogler's latest film, a bold and breathtaking journey through the heart of the Mississippi Delta that sings with soul and screams with terror. Sinners is not just a horror movie – it’s a sermon.

Set in 1932, during the height of Jim Crow, Sinners is a genre-defying fusion of Southern gothic, gangster noir, period romance, and supernatural horror. At the center are twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan), who return to their hometown after seven years of running jobs for Al Capone in Chicago. The men are weary and hardened, but still full of fire. They’ve got a plan: buy up the old sawmill and convert it into a juke joint, turning it into a space for Black folks to gather, celebrate, and be free, even if only for a night.

The brothers' homecoming is met with both admiration and fear. Their past hangs over them like humidity in the air, and their name still echoes with the reputation of their father, a man whose sins may have cursed them all. Smoke, the more introspective of the two, is dealing with grief from a personal tragedy, and it has carved something hollow and dangerous inside of him. Stack seems to be running from something as a past flame, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), returns to his life, a woman of mixed heritage who knows all too well what it means to belong nowhere. Then there’s Sammie, the cousin with a voice that could raise the dead. He’s a preacher’s son with music in his bones, caught between the calling of the church and the blues. His father warns, “You keep dancing with the Devil, one day he’s gonna follow you home.” There may be some truth to that.

Beneath the moody visuals and stylish period detail lies the true horror of Sinners: vampires. Not the glittering kind, or even the fanged aristocrats of European lore. These are spiritual vampires. They're not out just for blood, but for soul, for rhythm, and for the culture they can’t create but will kill to consume. The Black Panther and Creed director doesn’t just use vampires as monsters – he weaponizes them as a metaphor. In Sinners, the undead are a chilling embodiment of cultural vampirism: the way white America has historically – and continually – sucked the life out of Black creativity, commodifying it while erasing the people who made it.

For a short time, the juke joint is a sanctuary. Then, it becomes a battleground. What was supposed to be a night of music, dancing, and release turns into a blood-soaked massacre. But even amidst the horror, the music remains potent and transcendent. For Black Americans, music has always been more than entertainment. It has been medicine and magic. A way to cry out and be heard when no one else was listening. A survival mechanism and a prayer.

Ludwig Göransson's score moves like a spirit across the film, threading together Southern blues and even touches of Irish folk (adding a spectral quality that deepens the folk-horror atmosphere). The strings start playfully plucky, soulful, buzzing with the promise of freedom, but shift slowly into something more haunting, twisted, and ghostly. It’s not just background music – it's deeply entrenched in the narrative. The sound design alone makes Sinners a fully immersive, almost hypnotic experience.

One sequence, in particular, is going to be hard to beat in terms of memorable scenes in film this year: a single-take shot that glides through the packed juke joint as Sammie performs a soul-searing blues number. Coogler fills the screen with images of musical genres past and future, as Black bodies move bound by rhythm. It’s a spiritual visual hymn. And it’s also the moment the vampires make their move. Their pale faces dripping with salivation, smiling too wide, too sharp. Music is the blood in the veins that the vampires wish to drain.

The brilliance of Sinners lies in its layers. On the surface, it’s a stylish, terrifying vampire flick. But beneath that, it’s an epic meditation on love, grief, strength, and the violent theft of Black culture. Coogler is not just telling a story – he’s reclaiming one. He’s reminding us that the blues, born from slavery, struggle, and survival, is sacred. It’s the sound of a people who refused to be silenced, and it’s that sound that calls the monsters to them, and ultimately, holds the power to destroy them.

Jordan’s dual performance as the twins is nothing short of seamless. Smoke and Stack are both played with extraordinary distinction, processing similar trauma in different ways. Wunmi Mosaku brings gravity and grace to Annie, Smoke’s partner, whom he turns to for comfort. Hailee Steinfeld’s Mary walks the tightrope of identity, her scenes aching with the pain of in-betweenness. And Jack O’Connell is perfectly cast as the vampiric Remmick, a slick-tongued seducer whose charm masks a bottomless hunger. He embodies the film’s thesis: colonizer as consumer.

There’s also a heavy dose of spiritualism woven through the narrative, from hoodoo rituals to the sacredness of performance. Music is magic in this world. It’s not just a cultural inheritance – it’s a weapon. And when used right, it does more than entertain. It sanctifies, protects, even resurrects. In Sinners, music literally pierces the veil between life and death. But the film makes a sharp distinction between the types of music it plays with, blues and Irish folk, for example, and who performs which. The vampires can’t reproduce the blues. They can try to imitate, but they can’t create.

The film’s title invites interpretation, and Coogler doesn’t offer easy answers. But what he does make clear is that survival is not just about fighting back – it’s about holding onto what makes you whole. For Smoke and Stack, that’s their brotherhood. For Sammie, it’s his music. For the community, it’s their collective soul. The final moments of the film are both triumphant and elegiac. As the carnage begins and blood soaks the floor of the juke joint, the music never dies. Even as bodies fall, the blues survives. Sammie’s voice echoes across the Delta like a benediction. Smoke gears up for war. It’s not over, the film says. It never is. Because the struggle to be free, to create without being consumed, is eternal.

Sinners is a cinematic revelation. It’s daring, complex, and deeply rooted in the Black experience. Coogler has crafted a film that feels at once ancient and urgent, stylish and spiritual, terrifying and tender. He doesn’t just pay homage to the past, he drags it, kicking and screaming, into the sunlight. Beyond the scares, the stunning cinematography, and the crackling performances, it beautifully captures the strength that comes with the price of freedom and the comforting power of a song. A horror film, yes, but a love letter to the soul of Black America.