Sinners: A Vampire Movie with Soul

Honestly, I had no idea what I was getting into with this flick. I'd seen previews, of course, and I knew there was something supernatural about it. I knew it was in a historical setting and that it starred Michael B. Jordan and I knew there were racists and a nightclub in a barn. So if that's also all you knew about it then this is your official spoiler alert.

Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" is worth a watch and a spot in your classic horror rotation.

The supernatural bits from the teasers turned out to be classic need-an-invitation-to-enter, burn-in-the-sun vampires. The instigating vampires were an Irishman teamed up with KKK members. Michael B. Jordan is not just in it, he plays two characters, "Smoke" and "Stack," respectively. There's forbidden love, a couple healing from a miscarry, blues music, a preacher's son, and very real and honest depictions of a southern sharecropper society attempting to rebuild and protect itself in the Mississippi Delta in 1932. The two hour and 17 minute plot came together to make a pretty amazing film.

We open with an introduction of Sammie Moore (potentially based on famed blues pianist Samuel Moore?), also known as "Preacher Boy." He's a well behaved, loving son who wakes up early to pick cotton, knows bible verses by heart, and has a shockingly deep voice for a young man.

His only vice, really, is his talent and affinity for "that devil music." Anything not a straight hymn is, apparently, unacceptable and a straying from the church.

Too bad he's got that velvety voice and his dastardly cousins Smoke and Stack have recently moved back from Chicago, gifting him with a beautiful acoustic guitar and sanctioning him to play the opening night of their juke joint at the old sawmill.

Honestly, so much happens between Sammie's introduction and the supernatural events of the evening, you sort of forget that something beyond the earthly plane will even happen later in the plot.

Before you get to the vampires and the craziness, you follow Preacher Boy and his cousins as they purchase the sawmill from a sketchy fat white man, gander into town to get food and recruit additional entertainers and employees.

It's in these pre-event planning moments where viewers learn where the real good and evil lies.

We find out that the twins worked for Al Capone in Chicago. They're already operating in grey areas, but they know how to protect each other and lift up their own.

Smoke (pictured above in blue), is the level-headed protector of the twins. We follow him as he ventures into the obviously segregated downtown to acquire food for the evening's festivities, and then we see him visiting his baby daughter's grave. He pats the ground and cries and let's her know that "papa's here" before he's caught by his lover, Annie, whom we learn is something of a shaman and knowledgeable of the hoodoo voodoo magic and medicine of her roots in Louisiana.

There's pain here is Smoke grapples with Annie on the hard question: why couldn't her fantastical mixes and salves save their baby?

They mourn together and Annie is shown to us as the beautiful, wise and level-headed match to Smoke's own personality. We root for them because we see hope and vulnerability and tragedy and we wish for hope and love for each of them. Both of them.

Meanwhile, the charming and charismatic Stack heads to the train station with Preacher Boy to recruit some more talent, where we meet Hailee Steinfeld as Mary - a white woman in love with Stack and angry at him for leaving her, though her indignant behavior is misguided. She's white in the sharecropper south. In 1932, Mary and Stack may have loved one another, but it's not enough to realistically give them a life together. Victoria Kabeya has a great article on this racial escapism and its depictions in the film. We will find out soon: Mary becomes the first vampire at the juke joint.

But before all that, Sammy and the twins have successfully recruited a door man (lovingly known as Cornbread), another musician by name of Delta Slim, Annie and her fried catfish as the meal, as well as old friends and shopkeepers Bo and Grace Chow - the Chinese couple that help service the joint throughout the night.

Everything comes together in an amalgamation of freedom and relationship and music.

Music is the magic here.

Earlier in the script we hear an explanation of Sammy's particular gift:

There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true,

it can pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past and the future.

In ancient Ireland, they were called filly.

In Choctaw land, they called them fire keepers.

And in West Africa, they're called kriyats.

This gift can bring healing to their communities, but it also attracts evil.

At the club, Sammy plays his song "I Lied to You" and we are given these words again, this time with an addition.

There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true.

It can peace the veil between life and death.

Conjuring spirits from the past.

And the future.

This music scene is the best part of the movie and one of the best scenes I've ever witnessed in my entire life. I'm not the only one who thinks so, and you just have to see it to really witness it, but Heavy Spoilers has an excellent explanation.

Imagine playing music so well and so deeply that you rip the veil of time, of life and death, and attract the etherial evil to your party in an abandoned barn seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

It's so perfectly done, I cried.

The music is transcendent and the touch of history and spirituality and black musical excellence and and cultural roots is truly mystical. The scene is beautifully shot, roving and moving almost like the omniscient perspective from a floating supreme being. Your soul is absolutely lifted in communion with the music and the dancers.

The beats anticipate and culminate. At this point we've seen a bit of the vampire scenes and we know what's likely coming, but we'd rather live in that moment - forever a sinner - than be ripped from Sammy's song.