Are we reentering the age of the vampire? Are we witnessing a revival of the Southern Gothic? With the release of “Sinners”, directed by Ryan Coogler, on Apr. 18, a striking segue into a new era of cinema may be underway.
“Sinners” tells the tale of a small Mississippi town in 1932. It follows a young man named Sammie, whose father is the priest on their plantation, as he travels into town with his cousins, Smoke and Stack, to play the blues at their new juke joint. Smoke and Stack are twin brothers who left for Chicago but came back with a large sum of money to buy an old sawmill from members of the Ku Klux Klan.
We are also introduced to a sinister character named Remmick. Remmick runs up to a lonesome house in the country with burns all over the body. A husband and wife named Joan and Burt answer the door, and Remmick tells them that the Choctaw Native Americans burned him. Then, he notices a Klan cloak on the banister, tweaks his accent, and tells them it was the “Indians”. At this, Joan and Burt let him inside. When the Choctaw Native’s show up to warn the family of a man who may have come to seek help, they tell Joan that he isn’t what he seems. Joan journeys back upstairs to find her husband lying on the ground and Remmick in a chair with sharp fangs and a bloody mouth.
From here, the story jumps back to Smoke, Stack, and Sammie, as they prepare for the opening of their juke joint. They gather supplies, performers, and patrons from the town. Mary (Stack’s ex-girlfriend), Slim, Grace, Bo, Lisa, Pearline, Annie, and Cornbread are all introduced as supporting characters. When the party kicks off, all hell breaks loose. Iconic Blues performances capture the audience’s attention, as one of the main themes of the story is the power of music in numerous cultures. With the performance of “I Lied To You”, Sammie’s talent is strong enough that it breaks the barriers between life and death, bringing artists from ancient African culture all the way to 2000s disc jockeys to the party.
At this point, Remmick, Joan, and Burt have arrived outside of the joint with nothing but bad intentions and a thirst for blood. However, the traditional vampiric element of needing to be invited into a building is upheld. The three try to get inside but are turned away at the door. They walk away, but not too far, and play their own music just a few hundred feet away. Mary thinks they may be good people, so she walks down to them to scope out their intentions. It’s at this moment that the first from the joint gets turned into a vampire.
From here, it descends into a chaotic fight to stay human and stay alive until sunrise, when the burning sunrise forces the vampires to go back into hiding. Stack gets turned, Cornbread gets turned, and several others from the party get turned as well. It is revealed that Remmick is actually from Ireland and lived through the oppression of the British Empire and religious intolerance in Ireland. This subjection to European “superiority” is something that helped Remmick feel so connected to the black community inside of the juke joint.
This cultural relativity is exemplified in Remmick’s performance of “Rocky Road To Dublin”. Remmick performs a traditional Irish dance, and the others, acting in a sort of hive mind trance, dance around him. It was as if he were trying to connect to his ancestors like Sammie did previously.
The story is a commentary on the racial marginalization of the black community in the Jim Crow era South. In fact, at the end of the movie, after Remmick and the other vampires burn in the sunlight, Smoke realizes that Remmick warned him about Ku Klux Klan members planning to kill everyone inside of the joint. If they weren’t killed by the vampires, they would have been killed by vicious white supremacists come morning. Smoke kills the KKK members who show up, but without getting shot in the process. He dies from the wound, joining his beloved Annie in the afterlife.
The movie is also a layered question about religion. Sammie’s father is the plantation priest and his nickname throughout the movie is “Preacher Boy”. His father wants him to read the word of God instead of playing music, as he thinks that it will conjure the devil and follow him home. Sammie has no trouble reciting the Bible and playing guitar simultaneously. It’s later realized that religion can’t always save him. Remmick, who is the evil Sammie was warned about, can recite Bible verses just the same as Sammie. He remembers when Catholicism was forced upon the Irish people and the words were seared into his brain, underscoring the commentary on race theory that runs parallel.
At the end of the film, Sammie returns to the plantation and instead of dropping the guitar and giving up music to work with his father, he holds onto what he has left of his cousins and plays music into the 1990s, becoming an awarded blue’s musician on a world tour.
Michael B. Jordan plays both Smoke and Stack. His performance was so brilliant that audience members often found themselves forgetting that it was the same person. Miles Daton, 20-year-0ld-singer-turned-actor, plays Sammie, and this was an excellent film debut from him. Hailee Steinfeld appears on screen as Mary, and her minute African heritage shines through. Jack O’Connel plays Remmick, and his talents are finally getting the flowers he has deserved. He got his major debut on the UK show “Skins” as James Cook and has worked on other projects like “SAS: Rogue Heroes” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, but “Sinners” is giving him the exposure that his talent deserves.
“Sinners” was one of the best original films that I’ve seen in a while. Cinema has been in a period of remakes and it’s sick from nostalgia. It was so refreshing to get such an authentic and creative project from Coogler. His work consistently transcends expectations. The eye he has for cinematography and film is something searched for in every generation. We’re just lucky to have him in ours.
