Movie Review: Sinners

 

Michael's Movie Grade: A-

A top-notch vampire film. 

After proving himself with some excellent franchise films (the Black Panther movies and the first two Creed films), director Ryan Coogler delivers his first original movie. He proves himself to be just as adept here as he is at franchise movies. In fact, this may be his best effort yet. He accomplishes something quite impressive here. Coogler creates a film that works purely inside of an established genre (horror) yet has an identity of its own. The idea of mixing a story about 1930's southern blues music and a vampire tale, turns out to be a brilliant one. The music itself is amazing. I normally am not a fan the music in these types of period movies. The songs in these films often seem to be trying too hard to sound like songs from that time and place. That is not the case here at all. The music somehow perfectly captures the sound of 1930's southern blues music and if the people who made the music for this film were to make their own blues album, I would certainly buy it. Even a brief bit with some characters singing a country-folk song sounds excellent. The song sequences are not only wonderful audibly but visually as well. The visuals during these sequences somehow manage to be a great visual representation of the otherworldly-ness of the music. The mixture of visuals and music during these scenes transport us out of the more realistic style of the early scenes into the dark and nightmarish world of the later portions of this film. Speaking of the later portions of this film, while I doubt the scary moments are going to keep me up tonight, they are delightfully creepy and create a wonderfully dark atmosphere. Still at the same time, the film mixes in social commentary about racism, segregation and religion without ever once feeling preachy or forced. Instead this intelligent commentary seems to flow perfectly from the story and characters. 

One of the most important elements of this film is the cast. While Michael B. Jordon and Hailee Steinfeld are receiving most of the praise (both of whom are wonderful by the way), there is not a single weak link in the cast. Miles Caton as the young blues man is absolutely captivating, that this is his first major film role is nothing short of amazing. Jack O'Connell (perhaps best known for playing Louis Zamperini in Unbroken (2014)) as the vampire Remmick, provides the film with its creepiest and most effective horror moments. However, it is truly a great ensemble cast rather than a single performer that makes this movie work so well. 

A must watch, even for those who normally don't like horror films.