Sinners (2025) Movie Review

After a brief detour through the blockbuster machinery of Marvel, Ryan Coogler steps back into more intimate territory with Sinners, a bruised and blistering exercise in operatic genre that burns slow and bright but cuts deep. Ironically opening with a beleaguered sermon, it’s exactly the kind of film that doesn't raise its voice…not at first…but by the time its ferocious story is done with you, you feel like you’ve been screamed at from within your very soul. But this ain’t no preaching…this is a seething mass of murky moralising, less concerned with the saving of the souls of those within it and without, more with holding a mirror to those uncomfortable truths we try to hide from ourselves, stepping back, and letting our very demons achingly rise to the surface…and it just so happens that the demons here are both metaphorical and literal…

Michael B Jordan plays both Smokestack Twins, local crime legends-cum modern day Robin Hood types returning to their Mississippi hometown after serving time in the trenches of both WWI and Capone’s Chicago. Its 1932, and using money stolen from big city hoodlums, the brothers are planning on buying a rundown old sawmill from a racist landowner and turning it into a ‘juke joint’ – a den of profitable iniquity for the local community. Recruiting their crew throughout the day – their cousin, little Sammie (Miles Caton), a whizz on the old guitar; alcoholic bluesman Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo); and one of the twins’ ex-wife, the forlorn and broken but determined Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) - they open their doors as the sun goes down and opening night is turning into one hell of a party…however, Sammie’s music captures the ear of Remmick (an unrecognisable Jack O’Connell), a mythical figure of blood and teeth, who wants to use its power to summon all his other earthbound brethren to him to create a new world order…and as they arrive at the juke joint, the scene is set for a showdown with more than just a night of debauched fun on its mind…

Immediately apparent from the first sweat-drenched frame, Coogler has created a beautifully atmospheric myth all of his own. This isn’t just an exercise in pulp genre, a la From Dusk til Dawn, despite sharing that film’s tonal and almost genre hemispheres. No, this is something different, this is the perfect blend of operatic legend – as the introductory credits roll, we hear about the legendary power that music holds sway over the lands of the living and the lands of the dead, and it feels like it's been ripped straight out of the history books – and heightened genre, the kind where its visceral thrills and bloody spills are about something…more. It feels cheap to distil it as akin to Let the Right One In meets Angel Heart but Coogler has perfected such an evocative sense of atmosphere – lashing black folklore, ancestral trauma, the power of the occult and more ‘acceptable’ religions, and of course racial prejudice around a full-throated genre explosion – that its this mood that seeps from every pore of the film that gets its claws into the audience and never lets go.

This feels like Coogler stepping up a gear for his previous works – this is his Nolan Dark Knight moment: effortlessly knowing when to pull back and rein in his direction (the first half of the film is a masterclass of drip-fed tension building) and when to suddenly show his hand – a mid-film musical number which sees his camera prowl through the manifestation of the mythical power of the music will soon be whispered alongside other such moments of musical genius in cinema, such as Tiny Dancer in Almost Famous and Wise Up in Magnolia. Its an absolute masterclass in creating the epic out of schlock, the meaningful out of the mocked, opera out of genre.

...a stunningly stylish and atmospheric genre film that doesn’t scrimp on the blood and violence expected of its DNA...

For a film where music is so important, Ludwig Göransson’s score and music is stunning – from the simple acoustic bluegrass to the almost otherworldly blend of eras past and present, of influences on and from, it’s a gorgeous sonic tapestry that conveys the legend and power of the music with absolute ease.

And the cast, uniform in their brilliance, hold it all together. Jordan eschews easy character tics to separate the twins, the two performances uncomfortably similar yet absolutely defined (plus the VFX work in helping the two interact is seamless) and the brothers are thunderous in both their self-belief, their murky morals and in their absolute devotion to each other. The rest of the cast are every bit their equal, from O’Connell’s charismatically vicious but surprisingly fascinating antagonist, to Steinfeld’s deliciously vampy yet steely turn, and through to Lindo’s swaggering old hand who’s seen it all and can’t help but remind everyone that he has at every opportunity. Even a brilliant cameo from legendary bluesman Buddy Guy in the end credits is absolutely pitch perfect, nailing a perfect cap to a sublime cast that deliver every ounce of their worth to bring Coogler’s vision and mood to a living, breathing life.

There are going to be some who will want the film to be something it’s not – it’s just not a full-bore horror film: the vampires are kept offscreen almost until the last possible minute you could reveal them and still have the film be classified as a ‘vampire’ film. This also means it’s not really scary. Bloody, yes. Violent, certainly. Spectacular, at times, absolutely. But this is not a scary film. But then again, neither was Coppola’s classic Dracula interpretation. Neither was Hammer’s version of the Count. This is not the film that Coogler set out to make – he wants to make the vampires a physical representation of the carrying of pain and violence across time, a tool for moral compromise (Jordan’s twins are doing what they have to to survive, just like O’Connell…), a mirror for the dual nature of man as protector and hunter…and of minorities pushing back and trying to find their own way in a world of oppressive majorities...and he succeeds. Gloriously. Whilst delivering on his slow-burn narrative, with a fiery finale that fully delivers on the promise of all that had gone before.

Sinners is a film of grief, rage, memory and music…of the very essence of the human soul and the hurt than can be bestowed upon it by ourselves. It’s also a stunningly stylish and atmospheric genre film that doesn’t scrimp on the blood and violence expected of its DNA. And it’s also Coogler rising from the ashes of his derided second superhero film to deliver something uniquely him. This is him taking his place alongside Christopher Nolan as one of Hollywood’s best purveyors of epic spectacle cinema with heart, soul and intelligence. This is simply one of the best films of the year so far and likely for the rest of 2025.

Sinners is in IMAX and UK cinemas now.

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