When I first watched Sinners, I didn’t know what hit me.
At first glance, it seemed like a Southern gothic film, a stylish period piece filled with smoke, blues, and blood. But after my fourth viewing, it became crystal clear: Sinners is not a film. It’s a coded ritual. A spiritual war story. A message to artists, ancestors, and anyone born with a gift that costs something.
What’s Sinners really about?
Set in 1932 Mississippi, twin brothers Smoke and Stack Moore (Michael B. Jordan) return from Chicago after working for the mob. They use their earnings to open a juke joint, a space for Black joy, live blues, and resistance. Their cousin Sammie, a young musician with a rare, almost divine talent, joins them for opening night. But the sound Sammie releases is so powerful, it calls more than just people.
It awakens the unseen.
A trio of vampires arrive — ancient, white, seductive — asking for entry. Not just into the club, but into the culture. Into the music. Into the soul. What follows is a spiritual siege, where Hoodoo, bloodlines, music, and memory must battle parasitic hunger. It’s a war of vibration. And not everyone survives.
Vampires As Culture Thieves
The vampires aren’t just monsters. They’re metaphors.
They symbolize the systems that feed off Black creativity while offering nothing in return. Redderick, the lead vampire, doesn’t just want to drink blood. He wants what the Black community has, rhythm, soul, purpose, pain, and power, but without paying the cost.
He says he wants to belong. But what he really wants is access. To take, not carry.
This is where Sinners becomes brilliant. It doesn’t scream about appropriation — it shows it. These vampires admire the culture. They clap along to the music. They offer gold. They flirt. But what they really do is consume. They suck out the spirit and leave the body hollow.
History Isn’t Background — It’s the Plot
Ryan Coogler layers the film with painful American history. From the Klan to Chinese exclusion to the silence of Native people who’ve seen it all before — Sinners is full of echoes. But instead of preaching, it presents these histories as living forces. The trauma hasn’t ended. It’s simply changed form.
Even the juke joint, a safe haven, becomes sacred ground. A Black church. A sanctuary. Until outsiders ask to be let in. That’s how it always starts.
Evil rarely forces its way in.
It knocks, smiling.
And waits for an invitation.
Ryan Coogler: The Vision Behind the Veil
Ryan Coogler didn’t just direct Sinners — he channeled it. Every detail feels intentional, from the light that bathes the juke joint like a spiritual altar to the way Sammie’s music slows time.
The vampire makeup is eerie but elegant, never cartoonish, more like death dressed in beauty. The costume design blends southern elegance with ancestral grit. And the lighting, rich, honeyed, dusky, makes the entire film feel like a dream you’re not sure you want to wake up from.
Coogler draws inspiration from everywhere: blues mythology, Southern folklore, Hoodoo traditions, Black history, and Black futurism.
The visual language echoes Eve’s Bayou, the density of Kendrick Lamar’s lyricism, and the sacred symbolism in Beyoncé’s Black Is King. But the tone remains uniquely Coogler: purposeful, protective, prophetic.
He isn’t just making films anymore.
He’s building temples.
Final Word: This Is More Than Art
Sinners isn’t just a film.
It’s a coded message to the gifted.
A love letter to Hoodoo, the blues, and the protectors of Black spiritual lineage.
A mirror for artists, especially Black artists, in a world that wants the rhythm but not the roots.
Like Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar, Ryan Coogler creates from a place of ancestral memory and cultural pride. All three build their art on the foundation of deep research, spiritual alignment, and a fearless desire to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.
They aren’t just storytellers. They are keepers of the fire.
Sinners reminds us:
Your voice is sacred.
Your gift is spiritual.
And not everyone who claps for you wants you to win.
Love,
Mara
