Sinners (2025): Ryan Coogler's Film Hits All the Right Notes

Scorch Score: 🔥🔥🔥🔥

If you haven’t seen “Sinners” yet, I need you to GO SEE IT RIGHT NOW! IMDb gave it a 8.2/10 and Rotten Tomatoes honored it with a whopping 98%. I am a fan of horror, if you couldn’t tell from some of my past reviews, but I also LOVE vampire-themed anything. So naturally, I was excited to see this film starring Hailee Steinfeld, Michael B. Jordan, and Miles Caton. Most horror films typically don’t receive more than a 6.0 on IMDb if they’re worth the watch, so an 8.2 in this genre was a feat by director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther and Creed), and I can see why—

The plot line is easy to follow and simplistic in its structure. The Smokestack brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return home to southern Mississippi from Chicago in the 1930s after working for Al Capone. Their younger cousin, Sammie, wants to travel away from home and become a real blues player, but his father, a preacher, warns against the temptation of “devilish music.” There is also an air of supernatural forces in the film, but the vampires don’t actually appear until the final act, keeping the mystery alive throughout the first and second act's exposition.

This is clearly a love letter to Blues music, conceived through the culture of African Americans and minority groups who established storytelling songs in their communities that eventually spread to mainstream radio. The film is set in 1932, amid American Prohibition and the Great Depression, which paints a convincing picture of how music brings communities together, even in harsh environments like the Dust Bowl. Music meant hope, family, and connection to others. This is evident in the scene where Sammie finally plays at his cousin’s new bar. The music attracts evil vampires, but the scene primarily showcases the different cultural influences on music, dress, food, and social engagement. Various characters in traditional and modern ensembles dance around Sammie, unseen by the bar attendees but visible to the audience, illustrating music’s connection through the past and future.

Blues comes from Jazz, which comes from folk, which later creates Hip Hop, Rap, and many other genres! And most of them were not coined by the wealthy, white elite, but rather by working-class minority groups that had been oppressed and slowly granted more freedoms with time. But in that time, something magical happened: the blues were born from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and this film perfectly captures the talent and emotion of the music genre. The soundtrack is one of the best parts of the film with songs like: “Travelin’” by Miles Caton, “Flames of Fortune” by Don Oliver and Ludwig Goransson, and “Dangerous” by Hailee Steinfeld.

But let’s talk about the vampires. Yes, in this film that I interpreted as a love letter to blues music and Black culture, there were blood-sucking vampires. And they were white.

This was intentional, from my perspective. The basic white man that spreads his vampirism to others at the bar party could be a metaphor for how the white elite take what rightfully belongs to others: their sense of community, their women, and also their music. The vampires in the film are attracted to Sammie’s music, and the supernatural explanation is that the sounds can pierce the veil between life and death. But the irony is that the vampire leader tells Sammie how badly he wants him and his music. This could be a metaphor for how music credits (specifically in jazz, blues, and folk) were hardly given to those who created the music. Even Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley owe their knowledge and style to music that was originally created by non-white communities.

Beyond that metaphor, the vampires’ attraction to Sammie’s music could also be interpreted as the classic tale of dealing with the devil. The story of a wayward musician that sells his soul to become successful and famous, but at a cost. In the film, though, Sammie isn’t taken by the vampires and actually is one of the few to escape, but goes on to play the blues regardless of his experience.

At the end, Sammie is visited by Stack and Mary in the 1990s. Sammie is an old man, but Stack explains that his twin let him go if he promised not to hurt Sammie. This somewhat contradicts the supernatural explanation earlier in the film that the vampires were no longer human and were, for all intents and purposes, bloodthirsty animals.

But, after fifty or sixty years since the main events of the film, Stack and Mary appear to have learned how to control their thirst and leave Sammie be with a heartfelt goodbye (or as heartfelt as vampires can be).

The myth of selling your soul to the devil for success is age-old and the perfect simplistic basis for this film, but the director masterfully weaves in other social commentaries and cultural truths that made the scope feel bigger than just a horror movie.

I have nothing but good things to say; cast performances were excellent, fighting/dance choreography was great, costume design nailed it, set design was intentional, and I repeat—the SOUNDTRACK is a must-listen! The dialogue never felt forced or stuffy, and the characters were so compelling that you cared about their demise or triumph in the end.

All in all, this was a great film that stands out in its genre as a horror/adventure. I could easily watch it again. It’s quick, punchy, visually engaging, and one of the best films about music and vampires I have personally ever seen.