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Sinners Movie Review

Sinners is a 2025 musical horror film directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan. It’s a very well made and fun, but messy genre-bender.

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“We gonna kill every last one of ya“

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Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their Mississippi hometown to start again, but they discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back. I’d expected great things from this film judging by exceptional reviews and strong word of mouth. But even though I liked the film, it was overall a big letdown for me.

It’s very difficult to make a genre mash-up like this, which is why Coogler only partially succeeded at this project. I was intrigued to see this film and at first I was fascinated by its ambitious storytelling, but eventually I found the mixing of the genres not as seamless as one would hope. The first half is pretty much an entirely realistic period piece musical that functions as an overlong build-up to what would transpire in the second half where all the vampire action unravels.

But the issue here was that I simply did not care for these characters enough to root for them when the vampires come in. The movie attempted desperately to make me care for the main twins, but I found these cocky criminals unlikable and not as well developed as I would have hoped. Michael B. Jordan is expectedly terrific in this dual role of Smoke and Stack, but these two guys weren’t distinguished from each other all that much. Jordan is very charismatic here, but the characters were underwritten.

Hailee Steinfeld has always been an immensely underrated actress and she was very memorable in the role of this black girl who passes as white. Her scenes are all so electric that I wished that she had more screen time. As for Sammie, this character did not quite work for me. He is just a symbol representing black culture and music and not a fully developed person.

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Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo were among the standouts for me. Both of them did the best that they could with smaller roles and they were so memorable and likable. As for the white characters, they were highly stereotypical. I would have done without the KKK plot point as it was entirely unnecessary to the story and so obvious. It was wonderful finally seeing Jack O’Connell in a newer film as he pretty much disappeared after his stellar turns in 2014. He was one of the standouts as the main vampire – so deliciously over-the-top and sinister.

But I have to talk about the themes of the movie, which are so painfully obvious. The black girl passing as white is the first one to be turned into a vampire, effectively being a metaphor for a race traitor. All of the black people become trapped inside this place that was their safe space beforehand. There is also the point being made that white culture will suppress black culture and that through music black people will retain their culture and their perseverance.

I have no problem with any of those issues explored, but I do have a problem when you do it in such a direct manner that would fly over the heads of only the most challenged among us. There is even a line of dialogue where a vampire talks about stealing the cultural identity of black people. This is the level of unsubtle writing that we are talking about here, the type that we have seen recently in ‘Barbie’.

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It’s a shame that black directors who are obviously immensely talented let their activism come between their mission to craft a genuinely great product. Sinners was ultimately undone by that victimhood narrative and over-the-top symbolism. The technical craftsmanship, however, was evident. The cinematography is very strong, the score is terrific and the songs are uniformly unique, culturally authentic and fitting for the time period depicted. There is this scene where we go to the past and the future to witness the history of music performed by black musicians and that was by far the most artistic and poignant moment in the picture. But it had nothing to do with the rest of the movie that quickly became a vampire action flick that wasn’t particularly inventive in action scenes or scary in its monsters.