REVIEW #428 Sinners (2025)

Sinners

Synopsis

Trying to leave their past behind, two twin brothers return to Mississippi, but soon find out there’s an even greater evil waiting for them.

My Review

Sinners is a walking testament as to why Ryan Coogler is one of the few truly brilliant working directors today. On the surface, many may anticipate the film to be a simple action vampire flick, but the level of storytelling, both from a narrative and visual perspective, is simply outstanding. It’s certainly a film of two halves, sun up and sun down, perfectly illustrated by Sammie’s quote “Before the sun went down, that was the best day of my life”. This feeling was transmitted to the audience too, the first 40 minutes or so, I had a smile on my face the whole time, the characters were captivating, the music was fantastic and the organic humour created a wonderful atmosphere to juxtapose against the brutal second half of the film. Coogler was also the first to film in both 2.76:1 aspect ratio and IMAX’s 1.43:1 ratio and these alternated throughout the film, giving the frame a personality of its own, narrowing down when the tension rose and action was incoming. I must admit though, I do wish we had more of the IMAX ratio because when we did get it, those shots were unbelievable!

At the heart of the film is Black culture and history; music, dance and the darkness of oppression too and all of this is culminated into an innovative piece of cinema that marks the midway point of the movie. A sequence that pays homage to what came before and what will come in the future, all merged into a single scene that ties perfectly into the theme of music transcending life and death, past and present, fuelling the supernatural motives of the films antagonist, Remmick. On the other hand, whilst Remmick is certainly the antagonist, the film actually paints a pretty sympathetic light on the vampire, revealing his own oppression as a result of his Irish roots and simultaneously shifting the spotlight to the real villainy, which is the incoming Klan members. This transcended the film beyond a “white folk are bad” narrative and provides some complexity to the conversation that was really engaging and left me thinking long after the film was finished, unravelling the many underlying themes that Coogler and his genius mind incorporates into the plot!

It’s also been a while since I’ve seen a film where the lead characters were this captivating, the twins backstory is teased and alluded to throughout the film and in a world of spin offs, I find myself desperate to see what their life was like in Chicago, in the war and even growing up in Mississippi too! That’s a credit to Cooglers writing and Michael B Jordan’s performance, spectacular stuff! The entire cast performed well to be honest, perfectly cast characters that all brought something different to the movie. Jack O’Connell as Remmick was a stroke of genius, a complex antagonist that constantly makes the audience feel uneasy. Meanwhile, Miles Caton as Sammie, his first breakout role and he drops a masterclass like this? Yeah this man has one hell of a future. All of this was underpinned by a glorious score composed by Ludwig Goransson, a common theme for one of the best in the game. Finally, I just want to mention why this won’t have a perfect 10 score for me and that comes down to the final battle so to speak. I felt like it was a little anticlimactic in the end, the perfect build up and it was all over relatively quickly, which left me a little unsatisfied.

My Rating: 9.2 out of 10

Thanks for reading.

Film Review Club