My Cultural Diet

Because it features vampires, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners will forever be categorized as a horror movie. However, it’s more than that. Much more. And therein lies the problem. Writer/director Coogler, re-teaming with frequent collaborator Michael B. Jordan, swings for the fences with his story of twin brothers (played by Jordan) who return to Jim Crow-era Mississippi with a bunch of ill-gotten wealth and plans to launch their own juke joint, only to encounter something far darker than the local KKK. Coogler’s sprawling film tackles a lot: the lingering effects of slavery and segregation, the history and cultural importance of blues music, family legacies and drama, religion, and of course, the undead. Unfortunately, it never quite comes together in a truly cohesive manner, but rather, feels like three or four movies struggling to fit inside the runtime of just one. Sinners moves in some truly unexpected ways — in the film’s central number, for instance, a young bluesman’s music breaks down the barriers between eras, allowing the past, present, and future to collide in stunningly executed fashion — and there’s no denying Coogler’s scope and ambition. Although it’s clear why Sinners has become one of 2025’s biggest movies, it just didn’t cohere for me.

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