Title: Sinners Starring: Michael B Jordan, Delroy Lindo Director: Ryan Coogler

Year: 2025 Runtime: 2h 17 minutes Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Sinners is the latest movie from director Ryan Coogler (Creed, Black Panther) and stars Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as twin brothers Smoke and Stack.

Set in the American South during the Jim Crow era, it is a political allegory on the nature of racism with horror movie elements and steeped in black American music and folklore.

Confession Box

Sinners is that rarest phenomenon in contemporary cinema, a non-franchise movie with a solid box office performance derived entirely from positive audience and critical response.

Now – confession time – I had no intention of viewing this movie based on its shitty trailer.

Seriously, whoever made that trailer needs to be fired, it’s terrible.

Admittedly, Sinners is a tough movie to summarise, but a momentary flash of glinting vampire teeth would have made all the difference.

That way, rather than the run-of-the-mill horror fare it was presented as, I would have bought my tickets for the first screening.

Ryan Coogler directing, Michael B Jordan playing gangster twins, in the deep south, during Jim Crow, with blues music – and vampires you say? Hell yeah, I’m in.

Overview

Sinners is a rare breed indeed, an experimental, slow-burning yet hugely successful, non-franchise movie from a black director that explores racism through a horror movie lens.

It’s essentially a parable about racism fusing American folklore with vampires.

While many of the same vampire rules apply, the vampires in Sinners are different to anything we’ve seen on screen before.

These are vampires as gentrifiers, appropriators and slave owner parables. Not content to merely suck the blood of the living, they also suck the lifeblood of cultures to derive sustenance.

These vampires also love to party – and they’re coming for the blues.

Sinners starts slow and continues its languid pace for much of the runtime. This helps us find our bearings and get immersed in the location and story.

We meet the two Smokestack brothers, Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack”, both played masterfully by Michael B Jordan.

Smoke is the more cerebral, measured and strategic older brother, while the younger Stack is quick-tempered and mercantile, always quick to anger and equally eager to get paid.

Playing two parts can be a tricky proposition. Robert Pattinson nailed it in Mickey 17 whereas Robert De Niro’s attempts at playing both leads in The Alto Knights fell flat.

Before Sinners, the only actor who aced this test was Tom Hardy in the 2015 movie Legend, where he played London’s most famous gangsters, the Kray twins.

Like Hardy, Michael B Jordan’s twin performance is doubly convincing.

It isn’t enough to convince us we’re looking at two different characters with distinct personalities. For the movie to work we need to believe they’re brothers.

And this is where Sinners shines, we forget we’re watching one actor, instead we fully commit to the notion that these are two brothers, with unique, often contrary personalities, but always operating as a team.

We see, through their onscreen bond, that they have grown up in hardship together, come up in organised crime together, fought in the Great War together and, through it all, they’ve never stopped looking out for each other. 

Together they’re extremely formidable and local legends, young kids admire them like celebrities, while their parents fear them.

We get some backstory and small exposition dumps, but, unlike most modern movies, it’s woven deftly into the dialogue.

In the battle of show versus tell, Sinners is mostly show; a word here, a swagger there.

Sometimes a simple facial expression is all we need to understand the characters and their motivations.

We learn that Smoke killed their abusive father before the pair went off to join the army. After the First World War, they moved to Chicago and got involved in bootlegging and racketeering.

This is how they made their money and how they intend to finance their new venture, a new juke joint in an old barn purchased from a local landowner.

The landowner also happens to be in the Klan. And here’s where we get the first moment of tension. Despite having made their fortune and returning home like conquering Roman generals, they remain second-class citizens in the South where the “white folks” continue to call them “boy.”

But racist locals are only the beginning for the Smokestack Twins, as the grand opening night of their new establishment draws assailants of a far more supernatural nature.

To further complicate matters the twins each have to contend with the old flames they left behind.

We also have inter-racial taboos to unpack, plus a Chinese family living in the same segregated area who have since become culturally black.

By muddying the racial waters (no blues pun intended) Coogler adds additional layers of nuance. This ensures that Sinners is less a story about race and more about cultural identity and appropriation, while also commenting on the enduring legacy of segregation in the US.

And then the vampires happen.

Now, although it’s nothing like it tonally, there are two reasons why this movie invariably gets compared to From Dusk Till Dawn.

First is the obvious point, it’s about a cast of characters, including two brothers, in a rather ribald drinking establishment – and then suddenly vampires.

But more importantly, it’s how we arrive at the vampires and the switch between the regular story, which unwinds at a slow pace before the sudden unexpected switch to – oh fuck, vampires!

This switchover is far more abrupt in Sinners than in From Dusk Till Dawn.

It’s not that we haven’t gotten hints of supernatural shenanigans up to that point, but the movie does so much work heaping on character, depth and racial nuance up until the final act, we’re too engrossed in the main story to care.

It’s certainly a 2025 highlight, that moment when the entire cinema to leaned forward on their seats with a collective, “wait – what!?”

Personally, I would have liked if this movie delved more into the rich history of the blues, that whole Robert Johnson, devil-at-the-crossroads mythology.

Instead we get – sigh! – Oirish vampires.

First of all, why are the vampires Irish? And why would they be in Mississippi?

Everyone knows Irish vampires mostly live in Dublin and they’ve zero interest in the blues, they’re far too invested in the property rental market. (The greedy cunts.)

I’m Irish and saw this movie in Ireland, in a cinema with a mostly young audience of teens and students.

They were boisterous to begin with, deathly silent once the movie found its stride and then utterly bamboozled as we reached “The Rocky Road to Dublin.”

An entire auditorium as one – wtf? 😕

This is where the movie falters in my opinion, it’s fantastic up to this point but then it fumbles its central premise. Everything else is meticulous in subtlety and pacing, all suddenly jettisoned in favour of a couple of cheesy musical set pieces.

The result is a jarring disconnect between the main bulk of the movie, versus what the movie is meant to be about. 

I would have much preferred if Coogler removed the supernatural stuff entirely. In fact, I would gladly watch a three-hour Once Upon A Time In Mississippi epic chronicling the rise and fall of the Smokestack Twins with a lot more blues music and zero cheesy vamprechauns.

(Although vampire leprechauns… I’ll put that idea in my notebook.) 

The supernatural aspect of the movie runs its course as the sun rises.

And this is where the movie once again reminds us that it’s all well and good surviving the dark night of the soul – provided you never lose sight of who the real enemy is.

The Good

Michael B Jordan: his dual performance works for exactly the same reason De Niro’s in Alto Knights doesn’t – the actor dissolves into the roles and what we see on screen are two brothers with distinct personalities and an unbreakable bond.

Delroy Lindo: I have to give props here because I love this underrated actor and it’s always a treat to see him on screen. He plays Delta Slim, an uncompromising bluesman who’s “a bit fond of the drink”, as we say here in Ireland.

He’s a jester character in the greatest Shakespearian tradition, considered foolish, yet rich with wisdom, “white folks like the blues just fine, they just don’t like the people who make it.”

The Blues: Let’s talk about the blues. Let’s talk about the aesthetic of this movie and how every frame is drenched with the blues.

I’m not just talking about Ludwig Göransson’s score, which is heavy on slide guitar.

I’m talking that sweltering thickness of the Deep South.

Coogler’s direction is sublime, you can practically feel the hot sun beating down, making your neck sweat, swatting away the flies.

I don’t even know what the fuck cornbread is, but I can smell it baking all the same, while Bill Withers’ Grandma’s Hands plays on loop in my brain.

“Yup, gonn be a hot one today!”

The Bad

Botched Premise: While I’m personally not a huge fan of the horror genre, I do have a soft spot for movies which use horror as a framing mechanism to explore different facets of humanity.

Be that family trauma in Hereditary, asphyxiating grief in Babadook or, most appropriately in this instance, racial discrimination in Get Out.

Sinners could have been as good, if not better, than all those movies with a teensy bit more care and another quick polish of the final act.

As it stands, I loved most of this movie but the big third-act reveal is where the movie lost me.

This happens with a lot of movies, in fairness, but since Sinner’s is technically a horror movie, it’s like enjoying the first two-thirds of Jaws before losing interest when the shark shows up.

The Céile

Pádraig MacDraculán: There’s a certain irony in making a movie about cultural appropriation that then commits the exact same sin it’s meant to be denouncing.

For the record, the Irish aren’t all drunken dancing folk who love to party. We’re actually miserable, judgmental bastards with the worst (and most expensive) nightlife in Europe.

Besides, we don’t need to come to Mississippi to appropriate the blues cuz we’ve already got Rory Gallagher.

I mean it’s not like there’s a perfectly viable vampire nation right next door to us, who were the undisputed masters of cultural appropriation and continue to horde expansive museums full of other people’s shit.

See? This is what happens when you’re an American director with an Irish surname as your first name.

Come on Ryan, you never listened to Sinéad O’Connor? She’ll tell you who the real vampires are.

Standout Scene

This one’s subjective, for some it’s one of the coolest set pieces in the movie, but for me it’s out of place and pongs of cheese.    

Either way, it certainly qualifies as a standout scene and once you’ve seen it, you’re certain to have an opinion on it every bit as strong as mine.

It’s the scene where Sammie starts to play and the “ghosts” appear, ghosts from the past, ghosts from the future. It’s a scene on which the entire movie pivots and encapsulates the one issue I have with this movie:

A Cinematic Crossroads

Overall, Sinners is a really good movie. That said it could have been a truly great movie if the third act didn’t rob it of all the nuance and cohesion it had worked so hard to build up.

Also, the dancing Irish vampires thing continues to baffle me. I’ll get over it eventually, but it will take me a while.

Aside from that, it’s a rich and engaging story overall with amazing performances and music throughout. And it’s original – I’ve not seen a movie quite like this before, which is always a huge plus in my book.

Jordan deserves additional praise for pulling off something which even the great De Niro failed to achieve this year, playing two characters in the same movie in a way that’s convincing and engaging.

Sinners once again shows that Coogler and Jordan are a devastating combo, every bit as formidable as the Smokestack Twins, and I look forward to their next collaboration.

Similar Films

From Dusk Till Dawn: Similar in many respects though tonally and thematically it couldn’t be more different.

Directed by Robert Rodriguez, From Dusk Till Dawn stars George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino as another pair of outlaw brothers escaping across the border to Mexico. Harvey Keitel plays a former preacher whose family gets taken hostage.

The first half of the movie plays out like a standard crime thriller. That is until they arrive at a Mexican bar called the Titty Twister and the movie changes gears dramatically.

It’s worth it for Salma Hayek’s dancing scene alone. I first saw this as a teenager and never wanted to be a snake so much in my entire life.

Creed: This 2015 movie is written and directed by Ryan Coogler and stars Michael B Jordan as Adonis Creed, son of Rocky Balboa’s old rival, Apollo Creed.

It’s the Rocky spinoff nobody asked for and was so much better than everyone expected. I took a chance on it in the cinema and got that same pumped-up feeling I got watching Rocky movies as a kid. (Before running out the door full of adrenaline and knocking out the usher.)

The story focussed on young Creed reclaiming his name and his birthright. We also get to watch Rocky facing his hardest battle yet when he gets diagnosed with cancer.

It’s a heart-wrenching movie in places and the perfect way to pass the torch from Stallone to the next generation, while keeping the essential ingredients that make a Rocky movie great – thrilling fight scenes, rousing training montages served up with tons of tenacity and heart.