As a pre-review preface, I will say I suggest watching this movie blind. I suggest it for movies in general, but especially this one, for a variety of reasons.
Sometimes, I watch one of those films that I'm not very well-equipped to write about. You might object: "but that is every film!" to which I have no good response. But some cases are more extreme than others. This movie, for instance, is a lot about music. And I famously do not understand or appreciate music. So if you want to hear about that, you'll probably need to look elsewhere. I'm also not intimately familiar with the pre-WW2 South other than the broad strokes.
But what I do know about is vampire movies, and despite some significant misdirection, this is one of them. It tries not to let you know this right away, but also it gives up the game a little too early, I think, and could make the transition even more sudden and surprising. It is one of the faults of the movie for me, that it doesn't take more care to disguise where it's headed.
But now that the cat is out of the bag in this review, an inescapable thought I had about this movie which is unique to my stupid brain is that, based on vibes alone, it feels like it is set in the same universe as John Carpenter's Vampires and its two sequels. There isn't much to justify this position, but it just feels like a world in which vampires have existed for a long time, and will continue to exist for a long time, while most humans just go about their day-to-day lives completely unaware of them. Partially, too, it is that it a "horror movie" that isn't really a horror movie, instead it is a vibes-based experience with a lot of through-lines of the Western genre and a director who cares about the music. Of course, they take them in totally different directions, also; they are definitely very different movies!
The major thing Sinners does differently, of course, is that it has social commentary, which circles back to my ill-equipped knowledge base, but we'll focus on that anyway. The best I can do for you is my interpretation of the Irishness of Remmick, the vampire villain; the movie is about racism, and his position is an interesting one as an Irishman. It's a group that was treated with heavy racism in the past, but these days to the actual audience is just a white person, and this is thematically relevant as it places him in both roles at the same time. In our era, he's already completed his transformation from the underclass to full cultural acceptance by mainstream white people, and in the movie he takes his position as a theoretical ally and instead uses it as an opportunity to extract music from Black culture for himself, trying to take advantage of it, without caring about how that will impact them. I don't think I need to list the parallels this has with the treatment of Black music in the real world.
It also contrasts with Mary, who is a white-passing black person but chooses actively to support and be with them. What does it say, then that Mary is eventually turned (against her will) into their enemy, as is the twin who is sympathetic to the vampires as they make their musical pitch, and wants to let them in the tent? And that the brother who seems perhaps selfish in his drive for success and power and his willingness to fight and harm others ends up dying for his cause, but in a way that gets him to what appears to be salvation? I'm not in a position to judge, but it seems that it is that they must stand up for themselves and protect themselves and their culture, because no one else is going to, even if they seem to mean well.
In the end, Sammie returns to church and is asked to give up his music, the weapon which drew the evil to him (through no fault of his own) and which literally destroyed the evil in the end, his guitar acting as his physical defense. And he discovers another man asking him to let someone else protect him (God, the religion of the white man, perhaps not coincidentally) and chooses to keep his music.
Of course one could write endlessly about the layers of symbolism here, but let's just leave it at that: there is a lot of it, of which I've only touched on a small part, some of which feels like it works and some of which seems like a bit of a stretch or partially at odds with itself. At the same time it's a very pop-culture horror movie, plenty of action and style to give you something to care about if you don't want to think too hard about race and just want to have some fun. The action isn't particularly great or groundbreaking in any way, but it is adequate, and while I don't like the period piece styling much it is certainly has style and it has some great performances. I think that's the idea, that it can be enjoyed via either avenue, and it mostly succeeds.
Score: 7/10
IMDb: Sinners
PS: Give me a movie about the Choctaw vampire hunters, please. That's one I really want to watch.
PPS: I know, there is so much to theoretically say about the music. I just can't myself. Forgive me. Maybe read the thoughts of Natalie, who knows something about music instead.
