Coogler, perhaps best known for Black Panther and Creed, is ready to tell his own story, with his first original film in over a decade, transforming the cinematic landscape and setting a bold standard for future auteurs.
Sinners is Coogler’s latest masterclass in bringing both the epic and the personal together to tell stories with emotional complexity, searching for an emotional truth wrapped up in epic conflict and intimate resolutions. His ability to “go big” whilst never losing sight of the moral reckonings which make us human is perhaps what makes Sinners the stand-out movie of 2025 so far by a mile!
Set in Mississippi, during the Jim Crow-era, Coogler enters new territory by bringing the classic vampire genre to the deep south, however, to simply call it a “gothic horror’ would be doing the film a disservice. What makes the whole experience so enthralling is Coogler’s willingness to ditch the rulebook, instead he delves into an array of quintessentially American genres and reimagines them in order to say something about America. If you’re a fan of neo-westerns, horror, romance, thrillers or even classical musicals, Sinners is for you.
The film follows twins, Smoke and Stack who return home from a gangster lifestyle in Chicago to set up a juke joint for their hometown community, allowing their musical cousin, Sammie, to tag along for the ride. It’s definitely a slow-burner, with the film spending much of the first hour building the story world and immersing audiences within it. There’s a ton of exposition to navigate through, but it never feels intentional on Coogler’s behalf, instead aiding the emotional connection between characters as well as to the audience, and so when evil comes knocking, we care a whole lot more about the people inside the juke joint. The stakes could not be higher!
The dual performance by Michael B Jordan, whose long-term partnership with Coogler may very well begin to rival DiCaprio’s partnership with Scorsese, is exceptional, full of enough nuance for us to be able to feel a tension between Smoke and Stack. Perhaps the only thing they have in common is their love for each other. As for newcomer Miles Caton, who plays Sammy (Preacher Boy), his voice is captivating, luring the living as well as the dead to the fantastical world of Blues music. For me, Caton’s character represents the very spirit of the film, it is his soulful voice which connects the world of the living to the supernatural. He is able to transcend the story world, instead bringing history and culture together in a stand-out dream sequence which is nothing short of a God’s-gift to cinema.
In many ways, Sinners is about fighting for your own: for your identity, culture and community. Not just knowing where you come from, but owning it, sends a powerful message to the identity politics of today. I can’t wait to see where Coogler goes next, but I very much hope he brings some of the Sinners’ magic with him!