Sinners: An Ode to the Blues That Haunt

When was the last time you shed a tear watching a horror movie and not just mindlessly flinch at the bang of a jump scare? Sound, or its lack thereof, historically and technically, has played a crucial role in the horror genre. In this southern gothic nightmare, however, Ryan Coogler takes the genre’s oldest trick to the next level, where the score not only sets the mood or plays as the credits roll in, it’s at the forefront and it raises the dead.

Set in 1930s Mississippi, Sinners follows twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, (both portrayed with eerie emasculation by Michael B. Jordan) who come back to their hometown to start over, only to have to deal with terror—one that is more worldly than supernatural.

The cinematography is charged with remoteness and expectancy. Visually, the film oscillates between shadowy minimalism and bold, expressionistic tableaux. Coogler does not trade subtlety for spectacle. Instead, he introduces the dread slowly; it creeps in with every hymn and every stare. Thematically, there is a bit of whiplash in the film from how it goes from a time period piece about culture to vampires.

It is a big-screen delight, rich in sonic and visual storytelling—which brings forth the tragic realization that most cinephiles from Bangladesh will miss out on this grand cinematic experience, and only be confined to laptops or pirated streams. But that is a horror to be dealt with for another day. Until this cultural disservice is rectified, smaller screens offering next-to-no immersive experiences will have to do.

This might seem like a vampire genre renaissance—with Nosferatu first, and now Sinners— except, this movie was never really about vampires. Underneath this comic-book bravado, the essence of these blood-sucking monsters symbolizes cultural appropriation. Coogler manages to capture an accurate historical retelling of what happened to the Blues in America. This is horror, that is much palpable in the real world given its themes of racial tension, cultural upheaval and historical erasure. Sinners stand out quiet blatantly refusing to offer catharsis to its audience. There is no hidden chest containing the secret on how to get rid of the demon. There is simply no redemption here, perhaps only reckoning.