Ryan Coogler’s Sinners solidifies the filmmaker’s place among cinema greats that draw mass appeal through original storytelling and execute just as strong of a vision through blockbuster epics. It’s a vampire film that’s also a rich tapestry of art, music, and culture steeped in history, and in 70mm it’s a feast you can hardly take your eyes off of while simultaneously being on the edge of your seat.
Never has dread been this alluring. From the moment Sinners grips you with its stunning cold opening, Coogler’s film is a mesmerizing celluloid fever dream powered by his natural knack for and love of the art form.
I’m not even going to front: this is pure cinema, undiluted and rare. I’m a vampire fanatic and on that level it felt good to sit there and be completely enthralled by watching Coogler cook the most exquisite, blood-drenched sundown to sunup all-out fight for the soul of art. There are almost too many layers to unpack on first viewing, but all of them are deftly delivered.
Michael B. Jordan stars as juke joint-owning twin brothers Smoke and Stack, and Sinners marks another banger of a collaboration between the actor and director. Jordan transforms opposite an ensemble of incredible talent, including the film’s breakout Miles Catton, who plays the twin’s little cousin Sammy.
Sammy is blessed with the gift of true music in the form of blues, born of its ancestral sounds pioneered by the Black experience. Sammy’s story serves as Coogler’s entry into new vampire folklore, which he connects to real American experiences during the Capone gangster era. There’s old world evil here and powerful protective root magic represented in ways that we’ve needed to see on screen.
Wunmi Mosaku masterfully plays Annie, Smoke’s now-estranged former partner. She’s the Hoodoo practitioner for the town, and her magic represents the sisterhood that protects communities while Sammy’s power of music is the sound that unites it. It’s that same sound that, like a siren call, draws some evil hungry vampires to their locale to threaten what’s been built.
Sinners‘ vampire rules are a blend of classic with some tweaks. We have stakes to the heart, sunlight burning, and of course needing to be invited in. And it’s all played so earnestly without a hint of irony that it works, even when members of the own community get changed and try to get inside the club. It’s meant to be scary but also humorous, and these moments of levity give the audience a chance to breathe.
There’s just so much tension between the dangers of kindly-looking white folks with bloodthirst behind their eyes trying to get in the club, as well as the undeniable magnetism of the film’s leading women. Alongside Mosaku, Hailee Steinfeld plays Stack’s spurned lover who gets her man back so passionately—well, let’s say that the movie is gratuitously horny in the best way. You’ll never want to avert your eyes between the plenty sinful delights of the sights and sounds.
The attraction of the music that makes the creatures of the night converge around the club lights up the screen; you believe that Sammy is the light that these monsters want to steal and the layer of “why” makes it all the more incredible. In Sinners, Coogler lays festering truths about the world bare in ways that are genuinely genius and incendiary—while also exploring the duality of how, despite our flaws, what we create is worth fighting for in the face of evil.
I cannot wait to see this movie again, it’s up there as an all-timer vampire best with Near Dark, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Thirst, and Let the Right One In—all vampire movies that truly break out of the mold of the vastness of the medium and are simply cinematic masterpieces.
Sinners opens in theaters April 18.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.