Twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan), return to their home after robbing the major criminal gangs in Chicago, planning to start a juke joint while fending off the local KKK. They employ, for the night, their younger cousin (Miles Caton) whose musical abilities are so powerful that they rip the fabric of reality. This gains the attention of an Irish vampire (Jack O’Connell), who wants to bring that music, as well as all of the locals, into his vampire collective Utopia.
Sinners was the film of the Spring, garnering massive praise from most quarters. It is well shot, and better staged. Every second looks good. The acting is even better, with everyone in top form. And there are powerful themes (kinda…) dealing with the Black experience. The characters are well developed, and when the action pops up, it’s exciting.
And my main reaction: Disappointment. (some spoilers ahead)
With so many claiming this is the greatest vampire film ever made, and one of the top horror films, I expected something special and different, and what I got was something mildly enjoyable and shockingly the same. The problem is plot, but also confused themes and a very long setup.
For the 3rd of those, I’d have been OK with that setup—the hour+ of intros to every character and digging deep into who they were, what they wanted, where they were going, and how they saw the world—if the payoff was more interesting, more thoughtful. But the payoff is just a vampire fight. It’s fine, not quite as exciting as the one in From Dusk Till Dawn, but still quite good: garlic being tossed around like acid, lots of gun-play, fire, and staking. And there we get into the problems. Shoving a stake into a person’s chest is difficult, in multiple ways. Sure, the trope is the stake slides in like a heated knife going through butter, but that trope exists as something silly but fun for dumb but enjoyable movies. Sinners spent an hour+ telling me it was something more, and then it isn’t. Similarly, Smoke has ninja powers. He can pop up behind a villain, in a pond, and somehow not get noticed by a small army of vampires all looking right at him, nor apparently cause any motion of the water. Huh. See, that’s fine in a silly vampire fight movies, but if that’s all I’m getting, then cut most of the opening and call it a B-movie. I don’t need 2 hours and 17 minutes just for that.
And the energy of that big fight only works if the vampires are the bad guys. Are they? The vampires want to (and can) do away with racism. The head vampire wants to bring everyone together in love. He wants to share the music with all. Everyone will lose their hate, their trauma, yet keep who they are (depending on what that means). They are so clearly representing communists. I’ve heard many trying to say they represent colonialism, but that doesn’t work (the British didn’t take over an area, and then share everything equally with them and care about making them happy); no, these are communists, complete with violent “revolution” for the great gooder. And they are formed from an oppressed people. So are they good guys or bad guys? That’s an interesting question. Too bad it isn’t examined. Once we’re into combat, all that’s forgotten just to be a ’90s-era vampire action film.
I’m annoyed because there was some real choice stuff to play with. Music piercing the veil—now that’s great. So much could be done there. But it isn’t. And the interesting themes are the different lives these people could lead: church/crime-money/music/hoodoo/indentured. Yet everyone stays with what they were. The vamps are offering what seems to be a very alluring future, and no one goes for it? Really? They are part of the music…
And after it all ends, then there’s a Rambo scene. This is a vampire movie. If you want to have a scene slaughtering KKK member, use vampires. It reminds me of old exploitation vampire films that would stick in a shower scene so they could show a woman topless and it drove me crazy because, it’s a vampire movie; if you want to have a topless women, you should be able to come up with 10 seductive ways to make it happen with a vampire. Equally, they should have been able to come up with 10 ways for the KKK to get slaughtered using vampires. Smoke could have been partly changed into a vampire, but partly not due to his hoodoo protection. Or he could have tricked them into going inside were some vampires were hiding. Who knows? There’s lots of possibilities, all better than Smoke finally pulling out his big guns.
Again, the filmmaking skills are good (minus writing) and it’s that quality which is bugging me. This should have been so much better. The blues scene with musicians and dancers out of time—That was great. The vampires singing and playing together—that was great. We got stabbing and shooting when we should have gotten music. Yeah, I’d have rather seen a dance-off or a fiddle contest as the climax.