Sinners (2025) Review

“Maybe she ain’t white”

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Whether you are a good or bad person, we are all Sinners one way or another. 


PLOT


The 2025 film takes place in 1932 Clarksdale, Mississippi, following a pair of WWI veteran African American twin brothers, Elijah/Smoke and Elias/Stack Moore, who return home after working for the Chicago Outfit for seven years. With money they stole from opposing gangs, they purchase a sawmill from a landowner named Hogwood, hoping to establish a juke joint for a local black community. They are joined by their younger cousin, Sammie Moore, an aspiring guitarist that goes against his father’s wishes to perform blues music. Stack recruits local field worker Cornbread to be the bouncer and pianist Delta Slim to be a performer. As for Smoke, he recruits the local Chinese shopkeeper couple Grace & Bo Chow to be suppliers. He then reunites with his wife Annie who he hasn’t seen since the death of their infant daughter. As the two make amends, he recruits her to be a cook for the joint. The opening night seems to go well as many customers arrive, until the twins realize it’ll be hard for him to make a profit when patrons rely on company scrip. It then gets awkward when Smoke runs into his white passing girlfriend Mary who resents him for abandoning her out of protection. Sammie does enjoy himself for the most part when hooking up with a fellow singer named Pearline, but his music becomes so transcendent it summons spirits of past & present to join the crowd. However, this draws the attention of an Irish immigrant named Remmick, who wants to party with his company, the married couple of Bert & Joan (Peter Dreimanis & Lola Kirke). Smoke chooses to reject them knowing the possibility of allowing whites inside can lead to future conflict. This only paves the way for Remmick to viciously attack Mary when she leaves the joint, leaving a bite mark on her back; Remmick had also infected Bert & Joan the same day in order to avoid being slain by Choctaw hunters. When Cornbread allows her to come back in, she targets Stack, and Smoke would shoot her off his brother when he and Sammie walk in on her biting his shoulder. When she retreats, she vows to kill them all. With things taking a turn for the worse, Smoke closes the place early and all the patrons leave. As Bo leaves to get the car for Grace, Cornbread returns from a bathroom break he had after he allowed Mary back in. He’s not allowed back in when Annie notices his need to be invited, knowing he had been in and out all day already. When he asks for his promised payment, he tries to bite Smoke until he gets shot at, revealing he shares the same infection Remmick passed to Mary. Stack then wakes up and retreats when Annie throws garlic juice at him, revealing everyone is turning into vampires thanks to the irIshman; She deduces this due to her knowledge as a hoodoo practitioner. Remmick then reappears with his new horde that even includes Bo, offering them immortality but also promising to leave in exchange for Sammie as he wants his music to reconnect with the spirits of the people he lost a long time ago. With the hive mind the vampires share, he and Smoke confirm Bert & Joan are related to the secret grand duke klansman Hogwood and were gonna kill everyone by morning, meaning the whole sawmill was a trap. As Smoke still refuses to surrender Sammie, Remmick threatens to kill Grace’s daughter Lisa (Helena Hu). This engages her to invite the horde in and fight them off. She throws a Molotov cocktail at them and as Remmick blocks it, a fire starts and she dies in it as she stabs Bo with a stake. Annie gets bitten as well, forcing Smoke to stake her which prevents her from turning. When Pearline gets bitten as well, Slim makes the sacrifice by cutting himself to have the vampires focus on devouring him. This gives Sammie time to get outside the joint, but Remmick lunges over him still determined to get what he wants. Just as Sammie defends himself by smacking him with his guitar, Smoke catches up by staking him from behind. In the time of sunrise, Remmick and his horde, including an infected Pearline & Cornbread, all disintegrate to sunlight. Smoke then instructs Sammie to go back home while he defends the now destroyed joint from Hogwood. He’s able to wipe out the whole klan, but still fatally dies from a gunshot wound. As he enters the afterlife, he reunites with the spirits of his wife and daughter. When Sammie returns home, he still rejects the pleas of his father Jedidiah (Saul Williams) to seek salvation, instead maintaining his dream to be a successful musician despite the trauma he went through. The film ends in a mid credit epilogue taking place 30 years later after what had transpired. In 1992, Sammie, now an elderly man, lived to be a celebrated artist, but is stunned to see Stack & Mary visit him and remain the same age as he remembered them both. They reveal that Smoke spared them both in exchange for them to let Sammie live. Knowing that he’s getting older and will die soon, they offer immortality by turning him, but he respectfully declines and performs an old song of his that they remember. As the remaining vampires leave, Sammie recollects how the whole morning & afternoon before Remmick attacked was the best day of his life. The story concludes with Stack agreeing because that was the last time he saw his brother and the sun, knowing that was the only time they truly felt free.


THOUGHTS


It has been a privilege to see Ryan Coogler craft incredible blockbusters like Black Panther & Creed which are full of heart but ever since he debuted with a grounded drama that was Fruitvale Station, I knew there something all the more personal to share. In a lot of ways, this has to be his passionate film yet due to how he made detail matter going to it, as he sparked it to be a love letter to his uncle that got him into jazz music to begin with. Many films set in periods of the past with detailed costume/production design are known to be done with impressive detailing and it’s no exception here because you pick up on things you didn’t think would be there until you catch it. The best example would be seeing how there are two shops ran by Grace & Bo segregated by blacks & whites. Moments like that, or getting a look at the sunset and seeing the twins drive around before the intense action involving the vampires is what makes the cinematography by Autumn Durald Arkapaw so damn captivating. There is even impressive makeup and VFX to show off how grotesque the vampires are before and after the inferno that defeats them, but even something simple such as pulling off seeing double Michael B Jordan with a halo rig takes the cake. While it’s noted the presence of vampires is what makes it a horror thriller, it’s definitely much more than that since we wait more than an hour for the carnage to start, much like how it was paced in From Dusk Till Dawn. What is truly front and center is all the music. Whether you vibe to Jack O’Connell doing chilling covers of ‘Rocky Road to Dublin’, ‘Will Ye Go, Lassie Go?’ & ‘Pick Poor Robin Clean’, you’re on a chokehold to Ludwig Görannsson’s magnetic score and get in awe with breakout star Miles Caton performing original tracks ‘I Lied to You’ & ‘Last Time (I Seen the Sun)’. In fact, ‘I Lied to You’ and ‘Rocky Road to Dublin’ are the most well made scenes of the whole movies that you’ll tell yourself this is what cinema is all about. Having said that, ‘I Lied to You’ & ‘Last Time (I Seen the Sun)’ are the two songs that define the movie best when it comes down to it because they’re able to say it best that no matter how twisted life can get, there is still time to gain atonement and solace from what troubles you. This is the dilemma that the Smokestack twins and arguably, they both found content in unconventional manner. Playing both twins, Jordan is able to give an all timer in reflecting two sides of the coin. Smoke is more about being cautious until he has no choice to acting forward with last resort decisions like an ideal mature leader you look up to. Stack on the other hand is all about being confident & bold enough to take any risk he thinks he can do. He's willing to bet on company scrip because he wants to establish repeat customers, whereas the former wants the thing to be done in a more professional case. What these brothers have in common is their loyal bond to one another and that the purpose of making Club Juke a success is to have something meant for them and owned by them, their definition of freedom. Considering they spent their lives fighting for freedom, ever since growing up with an abusive father they killed in self defense, it goes without saying they earned that freedom. The problem was that their philosophy in having that would be temporary and they couldn't have known it until it was too late. Another thing they differed from is how dealt with their most visible weakness that was love. In Smoke's case, Wunmi Mosaku was a force to be reckoned with as Annie because she was compassionate with her faith that she passed on to protect who she loved. Although Smoke never admitted he believed it, he still kept her mojo bag to remember her when he was afar. He loved her so much because she was the only one to be his sanctuary despite being an opposites attract relationship, she was a healer while he believed in violence. No matter how heartbreaking it was for her to die, it was easy for her to accept it because she too was done living in grief. As for Stack, he had his own baggage when dealing with Mary. Hailee Steinfeld was beautifully great in this role because she wasn't this scream queen damsel. She was someone who was putting love first in a case that was far too reckless because she didn't consider how dangerous interracial relationships were at the time. Stack may be considered a bold man, but he just had different limits compared to his brother and I think that is why these two are meant for each other, they push each other's limits when it comes to affection. All Stack wants is for her to be safe as he knows he can't bare losing her and she doesn't understand where he's coming from until it's too late. Oddly enough, the curse of a vampire became their blessing because there would be no more excuses to be separated as their immortality allows them to live forever and kill everyone who disapproves of what they have. With both brothers reaching tragic conclusions, it still moves me they got to find content at the end of their lives because apart from Stack getting to be with Mary, Smoke can peacefully be with his family. If there is any bright side to this, their family lives on through the preacher boy of a cousin. Caton is able to rock the world as Sammie because we relate to the youthful feeling of wanting to chase the dreams and be rebellious to prove they're willing to take any leap of faiths for said dreams. He looked up to the twins because even though they had different perspectives and actions in their day to day lives, they had the commitment to get what they want. Smoke never approved of his dream because he felt that it's just risky at that point in time. He wanted to protect him in the way he wasn't able to protect his daughter and even though he still lived it, it's a certainty he took his opinion to heart. As for Stack, he encouraged it because he saw his potential in living to the fullest, which is what he and his brother wish they had. And by the time we see legendary musician Buddy Guy in the epilogue as his older self, it pleased me knowing Sammie got that fulfillment. I respect his decision to reject Stack's offer of immortality because even though death is the scariest part of life as it is the last chapter, he got the privilege living long enough to better accept it which is what his cousins couldn't. The fact Stack and Sammie are on the same page with this decision, I think this is the closest you can get in establishing a happy ending of a horror movie of vampires because finding content in life is the hardest part to establish in whichever role one were have. Despite all the chaos that followed them, it’s impressive knowing they still had an inner circle of friends close enough to be with them on what they wouldn’t know to be the last night of their lives. You can easily say Cornbread was a big victim of the situation since Omar Benson Miller portrayed him as he was the most chill and kind of individuals who just wanted to provide for his family and lord knows what happened to them after he died. Li Jun Li & Yao where also a great pair as Grace & Bo respectively because they’re were both equally share that position of being hardworking people, only to be separated in shocking fashion. It was a tough call for Grace to let the vampires in because it got herself and everyone else killed minus Sammie. With that coming off reckless, you definitely cannot blame her because any parent in her shoes would do the same to protect her kid. That’s what makes her death just as sad as Cornbread’s because we don’t know if their kids got to live longer lives than them. If so, then it wouldn’t be in vein but until then, the mystery remains. Jayme Lawson was also likable as Pearline because she was most enigmatic with everyone around her and she too sung her ass off in ‘Pale, Pale Moon’. She hits it off with Sammie so well because they had that mutual passion for music. For Sammie, it was more than that and being with her was like a new form of purity he never felt for, thus wanting to protect her the way Smoke tried protecting him. He even named his club after her, proving how much she meant to him after all this time. My favorite supporting character is easily gonna be Slim because Delroy Lindo was ecstatically great in making him the most cynical due to going through hell and back in his lifetime. Despite this, he does his best in having a good time with everyone else. If we were to encounter vampires like he did, we’d likely be shitting bricks too. Losing him was tough too because his sacrifice  was his way to redeem himself from saving people he couldn’t a long time ago. If he got to hear all the music Sammie made over the years, it’s safe to say he’d love it the way Stack did and at least his death would be confirmed to not be in vein as well. Now for a movie like this, there’s gonna be a villain that’ll leave you floored for how scary. David Maldonado can sure be a runner-up as the stuck-up racist pig Hogwood was all along, but it’s definitely gonna be Remmick by the end of the day when it comes to admitting who made the most impact. He’s not a guy who lives with hate, but instead, Jack O’Connell shows him to be one desperate for connection. Based on however long he’s been a vampire, he’s been desperate to have that and feels like having Sammie would give him that salvation. And due to how he was colonized all the way back to the 5th century, where Christianity was forced onto his people, it was easier for him to not hold back when it came to fighting fire with fire. That alone validates how offended he was when Smoke assumed he was with the klan. Of course, his way to go about it was never gonna go as planned and his demise sure put him out of misery once he felt the sun again. This movie will remain a timeless experience, but I have to admit there were a few moments that confused me upon rewatching. For starters, I think Stack shouldn’t be surprised the only reason Mary coming back to Mississippi would be related of her mom, which happened to be her funeral. I know he’s paranoid, but it’s on him not thinking about her mom before confronting her. The next thing, I think it’s funny that Smoke chose to have sex with Annie in the middle of her workplace without putting up a closed sign because kids could’ve passed by on accident. I also think it’s way too fast for Stack & Mary to make up for her to get money from Remmick. I know their relationship comes off mildly toxic and that’s the point but if she was crying over his honesty why he’s kept a distance, I wouldn’t move on that fast. I mean getting cash from one trio of white people isn’t even gonna help them surpass the two months they got to make a profit. And if there is any continuity errors, I’d have to say how no blood was on her dress after she got bit which I refuse to believe. Another thing, Smoke doesn’t even correct Cornbread of who hired him to begin with; the latter tries saying it was the former that did so to convince Annie letting him in, but he knows it was actually Stack. I don’t want to hate on Pearline, but it’s so damn dumb how she has poor aiming. I know she tries to defend herself and I can give her credit for that, but it’s embarrassing she’s the only one who botches it before she dies. And if you ask me, Smoke probably could’ve survived if he allowed the hand grenade to wipe out the remaining klansman driving away rather than over-rely on his Tommy gun. Lastly, how the fuck did Smoke get the jump on Remmick before sunrise? The remaining horde was right behind as well, so they should’ve seen him coming. Ignore these issues however, then you’re still for an ecstatic cinematic experience. In conclusion, Sinners is 2025’s most eventful film, earning its flowers in being an original story that’ll be leaving you hooked from start to finish. Whatever kind of moviegoer you are, this is meant to be seen at least once in your lifetime.