Sinners (SPOILERS)

I have spent the last few weeks thinking about this movie. My goal was to write something poignant about it, but the movie itself is so poignant that if poignancy is the point, then you can just watch the movie. So, I think this post, and my thoughts are going to be a little bit free form, and a lot a bit emotional. So, let’s get going.

Brief (spoiler filled) synopsis of the movie. The movie follows a young man named Sammie aka Preacher Boy when his twin cousins Smoke (Elijah) and Stack (Elias) return to their small Mississippi town from Chicago. Everyone knows these two twins for the various troubles they got into before they left the town and the twins plan to use that leverage and some hooch that they brought down from the Second City. They buy an old mill and go around town with Sammie recruiting old friends to work at the place, including shopkeepers Grace and Bo Chow, sharecropper Cornbread and musician Delta Slim. They also make connections with lovers old and new, with Smoke going to see his estranged wife Annie, Stack accidentally running into his (married) ex-girlfriend Mary, and Sammie meeting (also married) Pearline who like Sammie and Delta Slim is also a musician. While they’re making their preparations and promoting the new juke joint, nearby the vampire Remmick is being chased by Choctaw vampire hunters and finds his way to the house of a couple Joan and Burt (who is also a member of the KKK). He gets them to invite him into their house to escape the Choctaw vampire hunters, who attempt to convince them to turn over the vampire to them but upon seeing that they’re associated with the KKK decide to let them figure things out for themselves and make their way home.

Later in the evening, people come to the juke joint. Smoke, Stack and Annie discuss the fact that Annie and Stack have been accepting things that aren’t currency to cover drinks and food. Meanwhile Sammie, Pearline and Delta Slim perform for the attendees, and while performing it’s revealed that Sammie has a gift, where his music has the power to connect people through time, and dancers from past, present and future join from many different African and African American cultures as well as Chinese opera dancers who come as the ancestral link to Grace and Bo. This power draws the attention of Remmick who has since turned Joan and Burt into vampires, and they try to enter the juke joint. Being that they are vampires they need to be invited in, and when the main crew refuses to let them in they end up squatting nearby in hopes that the juke joint attendees will change their mind.

Mary offers to go out and try and see if the three have money to spend in the juke joint when she finds out that it’s losing money and is the first one to be turned. She then goes back into the juke joint and in private attacks (and ultimately turns) Stack. The main crew decides to shut the whole thing down, believing that Stack had been killed, and many of the guests that leave the party are turned into vampires as well. Stack eventually wakes up and is forced out of the juke joint by Annie who uses her knowledge of the supernatural to help the crew figure out how to defend themselves against the growing number of vampires outside. Because the vampires have to be invited in the group knows that they’re safe as long as they don’t invite anyone inside but Remmick, using the control he has over their loved ones, tries to convince those inside to extend an invite, including informing the group that he learned from Burt’s memories that the KKK had planned to come in the morning when everyone was leaving and attack the attendees as they were leaving the party unprepared. Eventually, after Remmick uses knowledge he stole from Bo’s memories, threatens to go after Grace and Bo’s daughter, which stresses her out so much that she invites the vampires in both in anger and in hopes that it will keep them from harming her daughter.

In the end, everyone except for Smoke and Sammie end up being turned and/or killed (Annie and Grace both avoid being turned into vampires, instead choosing to die rather than have themselves and their loved ones suffer in such a way). In the morning, Smoke waits for the coming KKK members and uses a stash of guns him and Stack had from when they were working with gangsters and kills off the group when they arrive. Sammie makes his way home, beaten and bloodied from the night before, and decides that despite the fact that his gift may have been the reason that Remmick showed up in the first place, that he would continue to do music for the rest of his life.

This is a basic synopsis, it doesn’t even begin to go into the different themes and metaphors that were presented in the movie, but I don’t think that’s really important for this post. The movie had a message, it had several messages about many aspects of African American culture, including honoring where we come from, learning to recognize the culture we created, solidarity with other cultures and the ways that can go awry, what constitutes Black identity here in the US, what cultural appropriation is, how America attempts to throttle Black culture, how Irish people became white in America and a myriad of other things that are all important to talk about. However, I think the most important thing about this movie is that it is thoroughly entertaining.

To bring in another action horror movie, I’ve for a long time thought that Hot Fuzz was a buttoned-up movie, especially on the comedy end. Every set up for every joke has a payoff, and I feel that for Sinners, the plot as a whole has a very good pay off. The movie is formulaic, but in the best way possible, because although it does hit regular story beats, foreshadows like a motherfucker and has obvious set ups for various scenes in the movies, each beat is hit so perfectly that you’re anticipating and excited for the formula. The beginning of the movie, when the crew is being gathered there are several moments when the fate of each character is very obviously foreshadowed, and you can see in the moment that something is being foreshadowed but it makes you want to see what payoff you’re going to get. It is both a masterclass in storytelling and proof that you don’t need to have a well-known IP in order for people to enjoy the story. You can tell a poignant story without it having to be fully grimdark.

I’ll probably, when I watch it again for the 4th time, have more insightful thoughts to write about the movie but at viewing #3 all I can do is sit in the emotions that the movie has literally wrought out of me. But for now, I think the thing I want to say is if you haven’t seen the movie yet, go see it! I think you’ll enjoy it.

If you want to hear me talk more about the movie, check out one of my podcasts Nerdgasm Noire Network where myself and 5 other Black women talk about it!