Sinners

Sinners shares similar DNA to From Dusk Till Dawn. Both begin as slow-burn crime stories about a pair of brothers with a scheme before shifting gears to become violent, gory horror stories in which our main characters end up trapped in a bar, fighting for their lives as besieging vampires want in.

There are plenty of differences. From Dusk Till Dawn's big twist came out of nowhere - no buildup, no foreshadowing, etc. - and that was the movie's big joke. Plenty of people were disappointed a character-driven story about kidnappers and their hostages became a wild, campy action flick, but if you roll with it, it's a fun, cool exercise in style for its own sake.

Sinners has greater ambitions. The vampiric threat is suggested sooner and built up, so it doesn't come out of nowhere. More significantly, the movie makes a more concerted effort to thread its halves together, so the character work and thematic elements don't fall by the wayside. Instead, the vampire angle enriches rather than detracts from the serious drama of the earlier scenes.

The result is one of the best horror movies in recent years, one that makes me hope writer-director Ryan Coogler spends more time in the genre.

Identical twins Smoke and Stack Moore (Michael B. Jordan), after years in Chicago working with the Irish and Italian mobs, return to their hometown of Clarksdale, in the Mississippi Delta, to open a juke joint. They recruit old friends to work the place, including their younger cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), an aspiring blues guitarist. But when night falls, a strange group of people show up, led by Remmick (Jack O'Connell), an Irishman, asking to be let in. Before long, it's apparent Remmick and his followers are vampires, and they promise to kill everyone.

Sinners takes a long time to get to its vampire siege, but unlike From Dusk Till Dawn, it gives us more ominous scenes early on and introduces Remmick before he arrives at the juke joint, so we know sooner or later, he's going to show up and cause trouble. 

The movie's central character is Sammie. We witness his skill with the guitar, but as the movie opens, we're informed sometimes how music can sometimes call for forth dark spirits. As Sammie's preacher father warns, you dance with the devil enough times, one day he's going to follow you home. This context hangs over the first half of the movie, creating an ominous sense of dread even before the vampires attack.

However, the movie is involving without the horror overtones because it takes the time establishing its characters and developing them. Jordan, in what might just be his best performance(s), shines in a dual role, convincing as identical twins while also giving them enough differences, subtle and otherwise, that they feel like individuals.

Clarksdale is also inhabited by an interesting, fairly diverse bunch of people with connections to the twins and their own compelling backstories. Both twins run into former loves, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), Stack's ex-girlfriend who passes for white, and Mary (Wunmi Osaku), a Hoodoo practitioner and the mother of Smoke's child (who died in infancy).

There's also Cornbread (Omar Miller), a sharecropper recruited to be bouncer; Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), a drunk piano player; and the Chows, Bo and Grace (Yao and Li Jun Li, respectively), Asian shopkeepers happy to supply the twins with what they need.

These characters might have come across as stereotypes, but they emerge as rich individuals, full of charm and personality with their own hopes, dreams, and fears. And when the vampires start dragging them into their fold, the result is shocking, paranoid, and heartbreaking.

Of course, when Coogler sets his story in the deep South and features predominantly African American characters being menaced by mostly white villains, it's all but impossible to ignore the socio-political element of the film. This is the pre-Civil Rights world of Jim Crow, sharecroppers, and lynching, and these characters have no one else they can call upon to help.

The twins and the others want to make lives for their themselves, to follow their dreams, and for the twins, the juke joint is their sanctuary, their oasis, their statement, but the environment is stacked against them. Sooner or later, white society, whether it be vampires or the Ku Klux Klan members embedded in the local power structure, will try to crush them.

The film is loaded with standout musical sequences. During a performance in the juke joint, Sammie taps into the power of musicians past and future, leading to a showstopping visual and musical performance. Later, when Remmick tries to get the survivors to give up, his undead followers, by this point numbering dozens, engage in an extended Irish dance that is as surreal as it is unsettling.