Every now and again, a movie like Sinners comes around. Everyone seems to rave about it but I don’t see it. I don’t know why it’s been so hard for filmmakers in the last 10-15 to make good vampire movies. Maybe the Twilight franchise and True Blood series ruined it all.
The last good vampire movie I saw was the 2011 remake of Fright Night in which Colin Farrell had a helluva time as a womanizing creature of the night. But movies like Renfield and The Last Voyage of the Demeter ruined great premises with poor executions. And then there was that 2024 adaptation of ‘Salem’s Lot that had been long delayed and reportedly re-edited over and over it felt sloppy.
I heard so much of Sinners when it originally opened earlier this year that I was wondering it couldn’t be just a simple vampire movie. And it’s not. It’s a simple vampire movie that wants to be a complex vampire movie. Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, this should’ve been one of those silly horror movies a director makes when he doesn’t want to take things too seriously. It’s like what James Wan did with Malignant. It wasn’t great but you could tell Wan was having fun with an outrageous idea.
Yet, Coogler takes things too seriously and then abandons the whole seriousness for the whole blood and gore but doesn’t earn it the way Robert Rodriguez did with From Dusk Till Dawn. The comparisons are all over the place, I’d be surprised Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino don’t sue for plagiarism.
Set in 1932 rural Mississippi, the plot involves two identical twins Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore (Michael B. Jordan doing nothing to give either one a different personality). They’ve been working for the Chicago organized crime outfits and have made a lot of money. So, when they return to their hometown near the Mississippi River, the decide to open up a juke joint.
Their cousin Sammie Moore (Miles Caton) will play guitar. His father is a very religious preacher. Caton, only 20, has been performing for years as a guitarist and musician. He actually gives Sammie some life whereas Jordan seems to never fully understand the role as the SmokeStack brothers. Delroy Lindo is also impressive as Delta Slim, an aging piano player.
Then there’s Hailee Steinfeld as Mary, Stack’s ex-girlfriend. She passes for white and while some might criticize the casting of Steinfeld, her maternal grandfather is half Filipino and half black. Steinfeld also handles the role with a lot of sass you really wish she was given more to do. That’s because it doesn’t take long before this becomes a full-fledged vampire movie.
Just as From Dusk Till Dawn started out as a crime thriller about two criminal brothers on the run from the law, this seems to be a movie about two brothers returning to their hometown to stand up to the racist Jim Crow way of life. Delta Slim retells a story of a man who was lynched unjustly just for having a few dollars and the person who sells the brothers the building for the juke joint is obviously planning to do some Klan activities.
Yet these seem like afterthoughts Coogler added somewhat out of obligation rather than necessity to the plot. I guess Coogler was trying to turn the vampirism into some form of racism as it’s hard for the black occupants of the juke joint to tell who among them is a vampire or not. The movie is supposedly set in the Clarksdale, Miss. area which is about 30 miles away from where poor Emmet Till would be killed in 1955. And many of the people who dragged him out of his relative’s home were black people.
This might have made some good social commentary if Coogler actually leaned into it more. One of the horrible images of slavery and racism on screen is watching Kunta Kinte being whipped by another black man in Roots because a white man orders it. But then again, maybe a vampire movie doesn’t need social commentary. There was something funny about the Mexican vampires in From Dusk Till Dawn luring gringos into the bar on the promise of sex and debauchery.
But Coogler doesn’t know if he wants to make a silly vampire movie or a social commentary vampire movie. He attempts to make both but never really finds the right tone. At one point, the leader of the vampires, Remmick (Jack O’Connell), leads the vampires into an Irish song and dance. There’s something about Choctaw vampire hunters the movie totally abandons in the first act which actually sounds like it would’ve made a great movie in of itself.
My feeling is Coogler has had this crazy concept of a movie floating around for years before he became popular with Creed and Black Panther. After the success of those movies, he was able to make it. But it’s too long by half an hour and falls apart in the final act with one too many fake endings.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 