Flasz On Film

Ryan Coogler is a filmmaker whose career trajectory can only be described as meteoric, though logically speaking, I have always had problems with this term because meteors are known for smashing into the surface of our planet having burned to cinders in our oxygen-rich atmosphere, as opposed to what up-and-coming prodigy directors tend to be doing. I suppose the metaphor abandons factual authenticity and works only to describe things that fly fast and burn bright. Which is what Ryan Coogler has done so far, but I don’t suppose he has any intention of slowing down or getting close to crashing into the ground. 

He swiftly moved from making an indie darling Fruitvale Station to taking over the Rocky series and making the second-best movie in the franchise (Creed) and then became the first black director to direct a Marvel movie with Black Panther, which also became one of the biggest movies of all time with its box office take heading north of one billion dollars with relative ease. Having pushed out Black Panther: Wakanda Forever a few years ago (which still made considerable money, especially in the post-pandemic landscape where streaming platforms have successfully undermined the long-held supremacy of the big screen), he is now back on the streets, un-Marveled, and ready to assert his position as one of the most prominent currently working mainstream directors. 

And I have to say that Coogler’s new movie Sinners shows that the filmmaker has not been fully institutionalized and coddled by the riches of the House of Mouse, the assembly line production of pre-visualized filmmaking or the storytelling constraints imposed by Marvel’s iron fist. Even the marketing alone is enough to titillate the viewer and make them wonder as to what exactly Coogler (who directed and wrote the story himself) is about to serve with what looks like a stylized attempt at a period piece with a sinister core… and at this point, if you haven’t seen the movie, you might as well go to the cinema and see it because it is impossible to discuss it in any way without revealing elements of the plot that are better left unspoiled. 

Therefore, I dove into Sinners with my heart wide open and found that indeed Ryan Coogler has what it takes to be counted among the most prodigious Hollywood voices currently in existence. At the same time, I also discovered that you can’t dance with the devil and not end up with your clothes perfumed by his sulfurous odor and that working with Disney and Marvel will alter even the most assertive artistic voices in existence. But more on that in a second.  

First, I’d like to spend a few minutes expanding on a simple recommendation I have for everyone who likes good movies to go out and see Sinners. And that’s specifically because it’s a rare example of a movie that not only brings some much-needed freshness into an otherwise worn-out storytelling archetype, but also a movie that does so in ways that are even more infrequently encountered these days. Now, to cut straight to the chase—and at this point, if you’re reading this and have not seen the movie, you have only yourself to blame because I did warn you a few paragraphs ago—adding anything new or fresh to the genre of vampire horror, or using its motifs in novel ways tends to be exceptionally difficult.  

Having said that, however, I think it might be important to acknowledge that I might have made that claim every time a vampire movie came along to attempt (and/or succeed) at refreshing that template. Which means that not only it is possible, but it has also been achieved repeatedly. You don’t have to think very hard to find recent examples of that. Think of The Last Voyage of the Demeter as an example of Dracula told from an unusual perspective, as is the equally recent Renfield. Only Lovers Left Alive tackles vampirism as an exploration of immortality. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night meshes the vampire lore with western and noir elements. Abigail filters in Bram Stoker-isms into a slasher template paying homage to the late 90s horror revival modality, thus giving the movie some fresh and fun vibes. And these are just ideas pulled together out of the last decade or so.  

Therefore, I think an important set of qualifications needs to be made to contextualize the notion of bringing freshness to vampire horror movies and I think it goes with acknowledging that staleness most often creeps into the picture because either the film in question attempts to re-tell well-worn narratives (like the Robert Eggers-directed remake of Nosferatu) or it retreads avenues covered previously by many other filmmakers. We’ve seen several “Dracula comes to my hometown” movies (from multiple iterations of Salem’s Lot to Fright Night), a number of vampire westerns like Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, John Carpenter’s Vampires or Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk till Dawn, or vampirism used as potent thematic metaphors (Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, The Lost Boys, or even Let the Right One In). We had space vampires (Lifeforce) and post-apocalyptic vampires (Daybreakers and I Am Legend). In short, we’ve seen a lot and that’s why it’s hard to find a way to do something new or do something familiar in a way that is fresh.  

Which is why Sinners is an extremely interesting movie to talk about because it eschews the expectations of Dracula-heavy vampire lore and uses the concept of vampirism as a thematic crutch that is both somewhat familiar and quite novel, while setting the story in a way that gives the movie a compelling edge. I’m not going to pull wool over your eyes and pretend that using vampire-related motifs to talk about race is ground-breaking because doing so would diminish such movies as Ganja & Hess (together with its Spike Lee-directed quasi-remake Da Sweet Blood of Jesus) or the Blacula movies, or even the Wes Craven-directed and much-derided Vampire in Brooklyn. The point I’m trying to make is that Ryan Coogler, while consciously aware of this legacy, managed to chart a path for his story that looks fresh enough to pass as novel. And that’s more than good enough.  

The story is set in the Prohibition-era Deep South, which already presents an interesting wrinkle because it positions Sinners as a period piece above all else. And furthermore, the horror that ensues becomes by default an evolution of the canonical gothic horror because by virtue of its need for period adherence alone. In it, Coogler’s story follows a pair of twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan), former gangsters who come back to their home turf and buy a barn from a local landowner (and presumably a despicable racist) with an intention to turn it into a juke joint. But on opening night things turn awry, as their outfit is besieged by a trio of local white folk with banjos, razor-sharp canines and a demonic twinkle in their eyes.  

Thus, Sinners becomes equally a deceptively simple siege movie that references liberally the aforementioned From Dusk till Dawn and many more genre classics. It even sports a garlic-themed iteration of the iconic scene from John Carpenter’s The Thing, but you’d be way off mark if you dismissed it as a where’s Waldo of movie references or a roadside shrine bespeckled with winks and nods to all the great filmmakers Coogler holds in the highest esteem. Coogler’s movie cuts deeper and deploys genre-specific motifs in service of both the narrative and the central set of themes commenting on cultural appropriation, music as a means of retaining freedom of the mind and the era- and region-appropriate themes relating to interracial relationships, persecution and the long-coming retribution for the sins of slavery.  

Admittedly, it is a tall ask to include all those ideas in a movie that also happens to be for the most part resting upon a simple narrative framework. And the filmmaker pulls out all the stops to make sure many of these concepts—black identity, blues as culturally tethered to the African American experience that was hijacked by the white-owned music industry, assimilation, etc.—mesh together in a coherent and, crucially, compelling way. Coogler relies predominantly on heightened visuals, magical realism and truly inspired camera work to achieve that. With long, roaming takes, and sequences that briefly forgo on-the-ground realism of following characters and a plot in pursuit of an inspired conversations about the timelessness of music and what it means to those who perform it, Sinners truly sets itself apart and stands as a genuinely unique specimen among other contemporary genre movies. A handful of sequences are genuinely awe-inspiring in how the camera teases us and sways between past and present while moving between musical styles, as though to remind us—without a single word being uttered—that the movie wants us to see the black experience reflected through art. Sure, the script writes in a few comments to bolster these notions, like the one where Delroy Lindo, a busking harmonica player recruited to play alongside Miles Caton on guitar tells his benefactors that white folks sure like the blues but they don’t like the people who play it. In a way, Coogler’s movie thus becomes an inspired genre-tilted extension of the relatively recent Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. It’s an honestly fascinating study reliant on a combination of simple and accessible metaphors that all add together to form an intricate thematic picture… while also indulging in the kind of violence and exhilaration any genre hound would come to expect from a horror movie about vampires. Garlic, stakes, bloodletting. The works. 

The one problem I have with Sinners—and I have alluded to it already—is that the movie seems unable to find the right balance between the density of its thematic messaging and the physical limits of what the narrative framework can hold together. To put it in musical terms, it begins as a blues-rock medley and grows into a succession of improvised solos where the musicians didn’t quite agree on where the song would end. While it is enjoyable to an appreciable extent to participate in a tonally transcendent experience of being a part of something artistically spontaneous and inspired, there will come a time when the piece should end. And instead of folding back into some form of structure, the movie chooses the option of fading into silence mid-solo, fading right back up and then fading back down again a few times, thus leaving the viewer in a stunned state of suspended animation.  

It is as though Ryan Coogler’s experience making movies in the MCU have rubbed off on him too much and now he thought it was acceptable to stuff his movie with too much content and narrative because the expectation would be for other films to pick up the spillover. The problem is that Sinners is not trying to set up a shared universe and nor should it, but it nevertheless behaves as though it wanted to. Between paying off its multiple throwaway references, revisiting loose threads and indulging in a series of false endings, Coogler’s movie clearly overstays its welcome.

Sometimes less is more, a lesson that the Mouse House moguls have yet to learn. Some character wrinkles are best left as wrinkles. Some off-the-cuff remarks need not become plot points. I think that Sinners was perfectly positioned to capitalize on the combination of its thematic strengths and the ways in which it incorporated genre elements to bolster its potent messaging. But the filmmaker must have felt he needed to keep adding more and, consequently, he needed to call back to it all in due time, thus extending the movie by at least twenty minutes that could have been left on the cutting room floor. Do I need to be reminded that Smoke and Stack were WWI veterans? Do I need one of the brothers to confront the Ku Klux Klan? Probably not.  

Alas, Sinners fails to end on a high note and, as I mentioned before, fades indecisively into silence through repeated false endings. What had the opportunity to brush shoulders with perfection ended up undermined by the simple and sad realization that it might be after all impossible to get into bed with a big studio like Disney or Marvel and emerge unchanged. Your perception of what works and what is allowed within the parameters of a compelling theme-driven narrative may become completely compromised after a few stints in a shared universe of McBloatBusters where plot is king, character traits are endlessly exploitable and world-building through tangential loose thread management is most encouraged. In a movie like Sinners though, it is completely superfluous.  

Thankfully, Coogler’s inspired visual storytelling combined with his virtuosic soloing over the shifting modalities of vampire genre-bending have built this movie enough goodwill for some of it to be chipped away in the end. But let the record state that Sinners could have been perfect instead of merely “very good.”