Sin­ners review – links the past and present with music and blood

It feels a lit­tle odd to reflect on Ryan Coogler’s career at this present moment and realise that the direc­tor has been locked into fran­chise film­mak­ing for a decade. Per­haps it’s because of how clear­ly his voice has come through even in lega­cy works like Creed, or amid the sti­fling weight of cor­po­rate syn­er­gy that comes from Black Pan­ther. His new work, Sin­ners, feels like a film­mak­er lib­er­at­ed: Coogler’s first orig­i­nal screen­play since 2012’s Fruit­vale Sta­tion, and one burst­ing with ideas in its bloody, anar­chic reflec­tion on a his­to­ry of black cul­ture and artistry (and its con­tin­u­al appropriation).

Set in 1930s Mis­sis­sip­pi in the midst of Jim Crow and Pro­hi­bi­tion, Sin­ners opens on a blood­ied and ter­ri­fied gui­tarist flee­ing to the sanc­tu­ary of a church, clutch­ing the neck of his bro­ken instru­ment. He’s ordered by the preach­er, his father, to give up his ​‘sin­ning’ ways and put it down. Coogler cuts away before we see the deci­sion made. One day ear­li­er and every­thing is (rel­a­tive­ly) fine, as Samuel is recon­nect­ed with his cousins, an infa­mous pair of local gang­sters known as the Smoke­stack Twins (one is called Smoke, one is called Stack, both are played by Michael B. Jordan). 

The two – sep­a­rat­ed by their red and blue ties and hats – have bought an old sawmill to con­vert into a juke joint, a rare com­mu­nal space for African Amer­i­cans liv­ing in this time. While this writer isn’t qual­i­fied to speak on the qual­i­ty of south­ern accents, both iter­a­tions of Michael B. Jor­dan are mag­net­ic, Coogler iter­at­ing on the actor’s fiery charis­ma by dri­ving the twins down sep­a­rate paths. For a time, though, he isn’t actu­al­ly the entire focus, with much of the film focus­ing on Samuel nav­i­gat­ing this oth­er world of liquor-fiends, gang­sters and mav­er­ick musi­cians. This naïve boy is con­front­ed with desires of the flesh that are a far cry from his father’s qui­et, neat church.

And so begins a rushed oper­a­tion to get the juke joint open by the evening, with Samuel recruit­ed to play some live blues music along with charm­ing drunk and musi­cian, Delta Slim (Del­roy Lin­do, pro­vid­ing incred­i­bly well-timed com­ic relief). Oth­er than the warn­ing at the film’s open­ing about music as a kind of mag­ic rit­u­al which can sum­mon spir­its, bring heal­ing to com­mu­ni­ties and attract evil, Sin­ners is played straight as a peri­od piece for a sur­pris­ing­ly long while. 

Coogler’s work has always been patient even with­in the mael­strom of fran­chise spec­ta­cle, but the first half of Sin­ners is even more delib­er­ate than before. His script roams among its wide cast, tak­ing its time to add detail to the char­ac­ters’ lives and expand the lay of the land, exam­in­ing a tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty of immi­grants, dis­placed peo­ple and out­casts who grad­u­al­ly fil­ter into the purview of Smoke and Stack. 

Coogler’s eye, via DoP Autumn Durald Arka­paw (a col­lab­o­ra­tor on Black Pan­ther: Wakan­da For­ev­er), is more trained on the immi­grant and dis­placed com­mu­ni­ties of the time; many of the white char­ac­ters in the film remain far in the back­ground for a lot of this time, quite lit­er­al­ly out of focus. The changes between large for­mat IMAX pho­tog­ra­phy and con­ven­tion­al 16:9 feel cal­cu­lat­ed rather than ran­dom, timed to stings of music or delib­er­ate­ly pry­ing the frame open. 

That might sound dis­tant and ana­lyt­i­cal, but Sin­ners moves at a sat­is­fy­ing rhythm and weaves pas­sion­ate con­flicts as well as lev­i­ty through­out this qui­eter first half. That could be in a sharp cut from Delta Slim being told about all the beer he can drink as pay­ment, to him glee­ful­ly play­ing the har­mon­i­ca in an impromp­tu street per­for­mance. Or in how a con­ver­sa­tion between Wun­mi Mosaku’s Annie and one of the Smoke­stack twins turns from spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion to con­nec­tion of a more phys­i­cal kind. This is to say that while Sin­ners nev­er makes light of the his­to­ry of the south, it’s not at the cost of the fun that can be had with this crossover between blues play­ers, drinkers, and vam­pires. Its reflec­tions on mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties are in part com­mu­ni­cat­ed through sex, big blood squibs and gnarly pros­thet­ics, foot-stomp­ing musi­cal sequences, visu­al gags and even a gun­fight, this well-honed car­nage almost over­pop­u­lat­ing the film’s sec­ond half.

With­out giv­ing the game away, as the film melds more with the hor­ror and the vis­cera of Car­pen­ter-esque genre pieces (Coogler has repeat­ed­ly cit­ed The Thing and Salem’s Lot in the lead up to the release) it begins to shift to some­thing more play­ful and flu­id. The shift is marked by an auda­cious sin­gle take sequence shot in IMAX, swoop­ing through the juke joint. The details are best wit­nessed rather than read here, but as the musi­cal sequence takes hold, Sin­ners aban­dons real­ism in a strange and bold col­li­sion of anachro­nisms, with music becom­ing a rit­u­al which con­nects peo­ple not just across space, but across time as well. There’s more than one dance sequence, each more wild than the last (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a group of vam­pires doing an Irish Jig). 

The even­tu­al turn to its riotous sec­ond half is under­lined by a typ­i­cal­ly inven­tive sound­track from Lud­wig Görans­son. The mul­ti­fac­eted score begins with blues gui­tar play­ing as a base before sub­tly lay­er­ing oth­er styles of music over it. Com­pared with what’s to come, it comes off as for­mal restraint, with some­thing super­nat­ur­al sim­mer­ing just below the sur­face through uncan­ny instances of sound design. Some­times, though, there’s fun in being less sub­tle, and the direc­tor and com­pos­er indulge with the intro­duc­tion of the vam­pire Rem­mick (Jack O’Connell), his arrival announced with the crash of drums and heavy elec­tric gui­tar, the pres­ence of which feels as unnat­ur­al as the demon­ic enti­ties we’re watch­ing. The film’s visu­al idea of the vam­pire is sim­ple but fun, most­ly nor­mal in appear­ance oth­er than an uncan­ny glint of light in their dark eyes – using this sub­tle­ty to stoke para­noia in the increas­ing­ly con­fined sawmill. 

These two halves sound strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent, but it nev­er feels like a com­plete­ly bifur­cat­ed film: you can’t have one with­out the oth­er. The sense of har­mo­ny and shel­ter that Coogler cul­ti­vates in the first half is in order to blow it up in the sec­ond, per­haps so the audi­ence can share in the film’s rage and grief at how such spaces are invad­ed. The film as a whole does strain a lit­tle bit under the weight of these ideas, and the sto­ry runs sur­pris­ing­ly far into the end cred­its as it puts a but­ton on what the past means to us now. 

But regard­less, there’s ela­tion in see­ing these musi­cal per­for­mances and see­ing Coogler free to play with tech­nique and tack­le polit­i­cal ideas in a man­ner that’s been con­strained under the Mar­vel machine, for a time. Sin­ners ele­gant­ly walks a line between enjoy­able may­hem as well as a sense of tragedy around this safe haven being ripped apart – but also lever­ages the clas­si­cal allure of the vam­pire for moti­va­tions inspired by its reflec­tive first half. You can see the temp­ta­tion: of a pro­longed life in a time and place where secu­ri­ty is nev­er guar­an­teed as well as the pow­er to live free of the repres­sion of the church and the oppres­sion of white hege­mo­ny, with­out fear of demon­i­sa­tion from either.

There’s a dis­cus­sion of the con­tra­dic­to­ry dri­ves of Amer­i­can seg­re­ga­tion – a dehu­man­i­sa­tion of any­one deemed unde­sir­able, cou­pled with an envy of their cul­ture. Delta Slim puts it plain­ly: ​“White folks like the blues just fine, they just don’t like the peo­ple who make it.” In this con­text, vam­pires were always going to be some kind of alle­go­ry relat­ing to Jim Crow, but here they’re also evoca­tive of a long-stand­ing par­a­sitic rela­tion­ship between music pio­neered by Black artists and white oppor­tunists who take the chance to sep­a­rate the sound from its ori­gin. In that sense, hav­ing to work under this kind of sys­tem real­ly does feel like a devil’s bar­gain – and though Sin­ners isn’t so sim­ple as to have a cor­rect ​“answer” to its take on vam­pires, it’s excit­ing to see the many ways in which Coogler presents the indus­try as some­thing feed­ing on the blood of its artists.