Sinners (2025): A Sweaty, Gory Southern Gothic That Bites Hard—and Often
Sinners (2025): A Southern Gothic Vampire Epic Rooted in Tradition
"A maximalist horror musical that honors every vampire rule—and weaponizes them against Jim Crow." — 4/5 Stars
Sinners (2025) review: Vampire movies often punish those who stray from the rules. Holy water, garlic, stakes through the heart—these aren’t suggestions. Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s operatic Southern Gothic horror musical, doesn’t just follow the rules—it worships them. This is a film where vampires need permission to enter a home, flee from sunlight, recoil at holy water, and fall to wooden stakes. The mythology is classic, even reverent. The revolution is elsewhere.
Set in 1932 in the Mississippi Delta, the film follows twin brothers Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” Moore (both played by Michael B. Jordan), World War I veterans who return to their Black hometown to open a juke joint for their community. But their sanctuary is soon besieged by a supernatural evil—one that mirrors the very real terror of the Klan and the spiritual resilience of Hoodoo. Yes, Sinners is a vampire film, but its true horror isn’t fangs—it’s the world that made vampires necessary.
Tradition as Weapon
Coogler uses vampire lore not to subvert, but to amplify. When Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), Smoke’s wife and a Hoodoo practitioner, repels a vampire with pickled garlic juice, it’s not just folklore—it’s ancestral resistance. When the vampires cannot enter the juke joint without invitation, the threshold becomes a sacred boundary against both the undead and the white mob gathering at dawn. The rules aren’t broken; they’re deployed—as tools of survival in a world where Black life is already under siege.
Shot Like a Hymn, Focused Like a Memory
Filmed on 65mm with IMAX cameras, Sinners is often breathtaking—the Delta’s red clay, moss-draped oaks, and clapboard churches rendered in cinematic scripture. But the shallow depth of field sometimes isolates characters from their environment, making the world feel like a painted backdrop rather than a lived-in reality. For a film so rooted in place, history, and community, this is a rare misstep.
Jordan is magnetic in dual roles, though his accent—noticeably different from the rest of the cast—occasionally breaks immersion in a story so steeped in regional authenticity. And while many hail this as his “best role yet,” I’m not convinced. He’s excellent—but the film’s soul lives in its ensemble: Steinfeld’s tragic fury, Mosaku’s spiritual resolve, Lindo’s weathered wisdom, and Caton’s transcendent blues.
“Sinners doesn’t reinvent the vampire—it arms it with a cross, a clove of garlic, and a shotgun, then sends it into the heart of Jim Crow.”
Is it messy? Yes. It throws gospel choirs, knife fights, Hoodoo rites, and apocalyptic blues into a cauldron and lets it boil over. But that excess is the point. This isn’t minimalism—it’s testimony. And like the best Southern Gothic, it leaves you breathless, haunted, and changed.
Final Verdict: A bold, bloody, and beautiful vampire epic that could very well be the From Dusk Till Dawn of a new generation. Not perfect—but unforgettable. 4/5 stars.
Official trailer for Sinners (2025)
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