Horror Turned Into Historical Reckoning

Read Time:5 Minute, 35 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Sinners
–

Genre: Horror, Thriller, Period Drama
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 2h 17m
Director(s): Ryan Coogler
Writer(s): Ryan Coogler
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O'Connell, Miles Caton, Delroy Lindo
Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: What happens when escape isn’t redemption? SINNERS opens with that idea baked into its bones, framing its story around the false promise of starting over. From the outset, writer/director Ryan Coogler positions the film as something deliberately unstable; a work that shifts shapes, tones, and genres not to show off, but to reflect the fractured inner lives of its characters. This is not a horror film that just wants to scare you. It wants to sit you down inside a history that never stopped haunting itself. And congratulations to the record-breaking Oscar-nominated film, having surpassed films like ALL ABOUT EVE, TITANIC, and LA LA LAND that all held 14 nominations, SINNERS received 16, and rightfully so!

Set in the 1930s American South, SINNERS follows twin brothers who attempt to outrun their past by returning home, believing familiarity might offer control. Michael B. Jordan’s dual performance is the film’s emotional center and its most immediate “technical” flex, but what’s striking is how little the film leans on the novelty. These brothers aren’t differentiated through any gimmicks. They’re separated through posture, emotion, restraint, and subtle variations in how they respond to the same inherited damage. Jordan understands that playing twins isn’t about contrast for its own sake; it’s about showing how two people can carry the same trauma in incompatible ways.

Coogler spends considerable time establishing atmosphere before the film’s genre pivot. Chain gangs, sawmills, churches, and bars are rendered with an almost tactile specificity. Music isn’t background texture here; it’s narrative infrastructure. Blues performances are staged as communal rituals, moments where pain, desire, and defiance are given voice without permission. The decision to record many of these musical sequences live on set provides the film with an immediacy that’s hard to fake. You’re not watching a performance dropped into a scene; you’re watching a space transform because of it.

This attention to detail is what makes SINNERS’ eventual turn toward horror so effective. When the film pivots, it does so decisively. Vampirism enters not as a metaphor cautiously introduced, but as a collision that reframes everything that came before it. For some viewers who aren’t ready for it, this shift feels abrupt. For others, it’s the point. Coogler isn’t smoothing the transition because the film isn’t interested in seamlessness. It’s interested in rupture.

What SINNERS understands is that horror rooted in history doesn’t always behave politely. The vampires here aren’t romanticized figures or purely monstrous. They function as embodiments of consumption; of bodies, of culture, of labor, of identity. This is where the film’s ambitions are clearest. Coogler layers themes of racial exploitation, inherited violence, and cultural erasure so densely that the narrative sometimes strains under the weight. There are moments where the symbolism threatens to outpace character development, and the film briefly loses forward momentum as it circles ideas it’s already articulated effectively.

The performances prevent SINNERS from collapsing into abstraction. Hailee Steinfeld brings an emotional intelligence to her role, grounding scenes that might otherwise drift into allegory. Jack O’Connell’s antagonist is quietly unnerving rather than operatic, embodying entitlement and menace without relying on excess. Delroy Lindo, as a figure steeped in history and hard-earned skepticism, provides the film with its moral counterbalance. His presence feels ancestral, like someone who understands exactly how cycles repeat and why they’re so difficult to break.

SINNERS is one of the most striking films of the year. Cinematography emphasizes shadow and negative space, allowing darkness to feel intentional rather than decorative. The film’s color palette evolves as well, beginning with earthy restraint before bleeding into more expressionistic territory as the supernatural elements assert themselves.

The escalation in its third act is swift, violent, and intentionally messy. Coogler leans into pulp aesthetics, embracing a grindhouse intensity that contrasts with the film’s earlier restraint. This isn’t a miscalculation so much as a statement. The film wants to be unruly here. It wants the audience to feel the dissonance between careful observation and explosive genre catharsis.

What’s undeniable is that SINNERS refuses to dilute its anger or soften its conclusions. The violence isn’t presented as cleansing or triumphant. It’s chaotic and unresolved. Even the film’s post-credits tease avoids closure. Coogler isn’t offering salvation; he’s documenting resistance and the cost that comes with it.

SINNERS isn’t a horror film designed to be a standard slasher. It’s confrontational, fluid, and emotionally demanding. It asks its audience to accept contradiction; beauty alongside brutality, lyricism alongside rage. In an era of carefully calibrated studio horror, Coogler delivers something messier and more personal. SINNERS doesn’t just want to be watched. It wants to be argued with, wrestled with, and remembered. And whether you find it overwhelming or exhilarating, it’s difficult to deny its staying power.

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[photo courtesy of WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY, DOMAIN ENTERTAINMENT (II), PROXIMITY MEDIA]

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