Sinners is an anti-God, pro-activist diatribe that is more depressing than scary.
When it comes to the blues and the supernatural, the story of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the Devil at a crossroads in Mississippi is as legendary as they come. Sinners has its own crossroads moment set in a juke joint in which a blues musician pierces the veil between past and future, the portrayal of which by director Ryan Coogler is both laughable and embarrassing.
It's a shame, since up to that point Sinners was proving to be an engaging period-piece that told its story of race, self-determination, and entrepreneurship in 1930s Mississippi with impressive style. Michael B. Jordan stars in Sinners as twin brothers Smoke and Stack (no doubt a riff on the Howling Wolf song “Smokestack Lightning”), twin brothers who return from Al Capone’s Chicago to Jim Crowe-era Mississippi with a plan to open a new juke joint.
With their “preachers’ son” blues musician cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) providing entertainment, Smoke and Stack’s dream turns into a nightmare when an Irish vampire (Jack O’Connell) comes knocking on their juke joint door with a craving for blood and the blues music that the gifted Sammie delivers with (almost) supernatural power.
With Sinners, Coogler has essentially delivered an art-house version of a Blaxploitation film, complete with a literal white-devil hellbent on possessing the soul of these entrepreneurial and creative black men for his own wares.
Usually when it comes to vampire fare the “soul” in question is of the religious Chrisitan sense, with the undead an unholy abomination that can only be vanquished by the power of Christ. Coogler instead opts for his culture as the only source of good against his vampires, i.e. white people. It is troubling to witness not only such a condemnation of faith, but also the continual racial segregation of music (which is a gift from God to be enjoyed by all.)
Put aside the unintentionally hilarious sight of 70s funk electric guitarists and twerking hip-hop girls sharing space in a 1930s juke joint, Sinners is a film that asks its viewers to buy into its belief that culture is the only higher power worthy of worship, while religion – Christianity in particular – is to be viewed as mere comfort food of little to no power. Now that is something to have the blues about.
