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Sinners or Shillers? That is the question…
Currently, Sinners sits at 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Do you want to know some other movies that score 98 percent? Rosemary’s Baby, The Searchers, Psycho, Taxi Driver, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Evil Dead II and Vertigo.
Does Sinners deserve to be ranked among those films? Let’s examine the question. Spoilers will happen as needed. Not much exists to be spoiled. The trailer gives away what could be possible surprises, and the movie gives away who survives in its beginning.
Sinners
Sinners is about twin brothers who are World War I veterans. After making their fortune with the Chicago mob, they return to rural Mississippi to start a juke joint. The brothers buy a deserted mill, recruit a gaggle of blues musicians, a cook, a bartender and a bouncer and let the party begin.
Then vampires happen.
Comparisons to From Dusk Till Dawn are inevitable. Sinners is similar in structure. It switches from a criminal-enterprise film to a horror film halfway through. Night of the Living Dead and Demon Knight are apt comparisons, as well.
Michael B. Jordan plays both brothers. Jordan is effective on a surface level. He is cool, caring, dangerous, cocky and likeable. However, Jordan doesn’t create a lot of delineation between the brothers. One is named Smoke and the other is named Stack. Viewers will eventually lose track of which is which as the film goes along.
Joining Jordan is an old flame portrayed by Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit). The man with a real-life Star Wars name, Delroy Lindo (The One) plays a blues musician. Wunmi Mosaku (Batman v Superman), Miles Caton (Little Big Shots), Jayme Lawson (The Batman), Omar Benson Miller (CSI: Miami), Lola Kirke (Gone Girl) and musician Peter Dreimanis round out the main players.
Li Jun Li and Yah are thrown in for the Chinese audience as grocery store owners.
Finally, Jack O’Connell (Eden Lake) plays the vampire. As for who the character is and where he comes from, the film doesn’t care to tell us. He might be Irish, though, because he does a Feet of Flames dance.
Sinners Sinners Chicken Dinners
Ryan Coogler (Creed, Black Panther) wrote and directed Sinners. Black don’t crack, but Coogler shows seams with Sinners.
The movie does a fine job of immersing the viewer in 1932 Mississippi. Vast cotton fields dominate the landscape. Old cars putter around. Small towns bustle with life. Christianity exists alongside voodoo. Some racism happens, but it is surprisingly restrained.
The first hour of the film is spent gathering the team. The viewer gets the sense that the film is building to something worthwhile, so they patiently tag along for the ride. The party finally begins. The vampires show up…aaaaaaaand the movie ultimately stalls out as it dutifully goes through the numbers and finishes with a coda that borders on retarded.
Coogler knows how to set a scene, but he is shaky on storytelling. Once he finishes laying out the pieces, he doesn’t know exactly what to do with them for maximum entertainment. It also doesn’t help that he doesn’t seem sure what kind of movie he is making. Is it a horror film? A musical? An allegory? A vehicle for a drool-sharing fetish?
Sinners tries to spin all of those plates. They eventually start to fall.
Sin of Omission
I read a few reviews in preparation for seeing Sinners. One reviewer waxed gushingly about an “amazing” scene that he couldn’t wait to watch over and over when he owned the movie in 4K.
The scene in question takes place when the party starts. The music is apparently so sublime that it tears the veil between time and space. Performers from different eras manifest to create music together.
An appropriate response to this reviewer’s enthusiasm would be a question:
Is Sinners the only movie you’ve seen?
An average movie fan could blindly point to their movie shelf and hit upon a movie that has something equally “amazing” in it. For example, the truck chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark or Brad Pitt getting punched so hard he goes underwater in Snatch.
As for the music itself, nothing in Sinners is particularly memorable. It certainly does not match the songs of any true musical. A good comparison to Sinners in the music department would be The Wicker Man.
The Wicker Man is a horror movie that also makes heavy use of songs. None of the songs in The Wicker Man are Top 40- catchy, but a viewer can at least leave the movie with the line “And from that grave there grew…a treeeeeeeeeeee!” ringing in their head.
Sin of Commission
Sinners works best when it focuses on its vampire angle. The image of vampires with glowing eyes surrounding the juke joint works well visually. One wishes the 2007 version of I Am Legend could have used some of that imagery. The vampires themselves are also suitably threatening in their manner.
Sinners uses the rule that vampires must be invited in. The movie milks the concept effectively, but it quickly becomes clear it is the only tool in the Sinners toolbox when it comes to delivering suspense. The film can only return to that well so many times. And, to be honest, the Fright Night remake did it better with Colin Farrell…
Meanwhile, every time O’Connell is onscreen, Sinners pops. He plays the vampire king with a nice mixture of threat, manipulation, charisma and degree of hidden sadness. It is especially enjoyable when he and a couple of his converts perform a song to try to enter the juke joint. The movie could have used a lot more O’Connell.
Unfortunately, Sinners lacks vampire-killing set pieces. Most of the movie is spent with the besieged characters talking amongst themselves or talking to vampires at the door. When the action finally happens, it is an afterthought. It also makes little sense. How are five characters supposed to defend themselves against fifty vampires coming through large double doors at the same time?
Ultimately, Sinners tries to rely on suspense rather than action. It even has a scene straight out of The Thing when it comes to figuring out if there is a hidden vampire in their midst. Yet, the scene is so perfunctory that it is rendered meaningless.
The Deeper Meaning
Coogler is going for allegories with Sinners. References to “white devil” exist. Baptism symbolism exists. An image of vampires besieging the mill at night mirrors another group of characters besieging the mill during the day. And so on and so forth…
Stuff exists to unpack there, but ultimately, Sinners doesn’t generate the urge to care. It tries too hard to be meaningful at the expense of being entertaining. Robocop had allusions to Jesus. That didn’t stop it from going as gonzo as the subject matter dictated.
Plus, one ends up uncertain as to whether or not Sinners’s attempts at being intelligent are genuine or simply there make it immune to criticism.
Still, Coogler deserves credit for not requiring viewers to take on a load of guilt for watching his movie. Sinners is not heavy-handed when it comes to advocating victimhood. Coogler seems to have read the room on that subject. Folks are weary of it.
Sinners Is Judged
Is Sinners worth watching? Sure, but no need exists to rush to the theater.
But the plain fact of the matter is that you will have a lot more fun watching From Dusk Till Dawn, Night of the Living Dead or Demon Knight. When it comes to the 98 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it is pretty clear someone is committing the sin of lying. And when a viewer knows they have been shilled, they are less forgiving…
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