‘Sinners’ review: Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan deliver a vampire movie for the ages

Fruitvale Station. Creed. Black Panther. Together, Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan have built a cinema collaboration transcending genre. They’ve leaped from heart-wrenching biographical drama to soul-warming sports drama to a politically daring superhero movie that is undoubtedly the best the MCU has produced. Now, they reunite for a vampire movie with Sinners, and not only make one of the greatest vampire horror movies ever made, but also easily one of the best movies of the year.

Written and directed by Coogler, Sinners re-imagines vampires, making them a uniquely American monster and, moreover, reflective of his experience as a Black artist operating in a society in which white men often have control over the financing of art. And though the film has a literal preacher, Sinners is not preachy. It’s poignant, provocative, and profound. It’s also scary, funny, and it will fuck you up.  I laughed. I gasped. I screamed, and I wept. Let’s get into why.

Michael B. Jordan plays beguiling gangster twins in Sinners. 

Following Mickey 17 and Alto Knights, Sinners is curiously the third movie Warner Bros. has released in 2025 that features an A-list actor playing two roles. In Sinners, Michael B. Jordan plays both of the Smokestack Twins. Nicknamed Smoke and Stack, they were born and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi, but made bank up in Chicago, where, according to the rumors, they worked for Al Capone. Seven years later, it’s 1932, and the twins are back in town and fixing to found a juke joint “for us, by us,” as Stack puts it.

Mostly set in one 24-hour period, Sinners follows Smoke, Stack, and their awestruck cousin Samuel (Miles Canton, terrific in his debut role), who dreams of playing the blues, as the twins prepare for opening night. That means buying a local mill to house their juke joint and building a crew to run the bar, fry the catfish, play music, and guard the door. Within the rollicking excitement of this first act, Coogler creates a vivid world of complicated relationships, love, loss, lust, and Hoodoo. Meanwhile, Jordan gives not just the performance of his career, but two of them. 

At first sight, the twins are easy to tell apart: Smoke wears blue and Stack favors red. But even without this sartorial visual cue, they are instantly distinctive because of Jordan’s firm grasp on their differences. The planner, Smoke, is rigid, standing tall and firm, his tone crisp and serious, even when he’s cajoling his former lover, Hoodoo conjurer Annie (a radiant Wunmi Mosaku), into helping him out one more time. Meanwhile, Stack’s posture is suavely relaxed, his attitude devil-may-care. His red fedora suggests he’s a romantic rogue, as does the snarling unplanned reunion with his ex, Mary (a ferocious Hailee Steinfeld), who may be married to a rich, white farmer, but won’t be ignored.

With seamless compositing and visual effects, Coogler knits Jordan’s two performances into a series of face-offs as the brothers disagree over little things — like whether to accept wooden nickels from cash-strapped clientele or what to do about some unexpected guests to their opening night. Every step along the way, Coogler and Jordan are elegant in building the Smokestack Twins’ world, rich with friends, family, and charismatic characters, like a happily drunken harmonica player called Delta Slim (a sublime Delroy Lindo). Their world building is so enveloping that I began to wish Sinners were a series instead of a movie, just so I could spend more time with them before their community is ripped apart by supernatural fangs. 

Sinners vampire seeks not just blood, but souls and music. 

By the time the vampire comes careening into Sinners, you might have forgotten it’s a horror story at all. Sure, a bloody opening scene promises that preacher’s son Samuel will come through a horrid event. But the world of Sinners is so grounded in the rigorous rationale of Smoke and Stack that an immortal bloodsucker nearly seems out of place. This is keenly scripted by Coogler, because we, like the twins, might build our lives with all we understand to ignore the threats we don’t — doing so at our own peril. 

This is the twins’ world, but it is Samuel’s story. His gift of playing the blues, weaving compelling tales as he sings his heart out while playing his gorgeous guitar, is a magical power. In a solemn, soulful voiceover at the film’s start, a narrator connects this sacred tradition across cultures, including Western Africa, explaining that such artists can heal their communities through song, but also that their talent attracts evil.

Indeed, a white vampire named Remmick (a hauntingly creepy Jack O’Connell), who begins his coven with a couple of Ku Klux Klan members, is drawn to the juke joint’s opening night by Samuel’s music. This creative cousin’s song is so powerful that it transcends time, which Coogler displays in a heady musical number.

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As Samuel plays his guitar and sings, dancers and singers across Black culture appear in the juke joint. Alongside the revelers in their 1930s attire pops up a ’70s funk guitarist with an afro, rocking out while an ’80s breakdancer busts a move in a sharp sweatsuit. A DJ spins records and spits bars as fly girls twerk alongside West African tribespeople, bedecked in shells, beads, and ceremonial masks. It’s a glorious celebration of Black culture, rallying under one roof. And the vampires want in or — as a vision overlays the wooden structure — to burn it all down.

Their attacks will be manipulative, using the language of “fellowship.” But it’s ultimately the promise of money that gives them an opening. Like many movie bloodsuckers who’ve come before, Coogler’s vampires are averse to garlic and must be invited inside to enter a building. But beyond blood, Coogler’s creatures are carnivorous of the very spirit of their victims, adding their memories to a hive mind controlled by their master Remmick. He taunts the twins that he can see the memories of all he eats, and that if he gets Samuel in his clutches, those songs will be his.

This spiritual cannibalization deepens the horror of Sinners. On a surface level, Coogler satisfies on vampire carnage. His monsters boast gnarly fangs, glowing red eyes, and an invincibility that means they can be shot, stabbed, and bleeding out yet still cackle and run away — or even dance.

In sequences of vampire ambush, Black Panther editor Michael P. Shawver builds tension by cutting from outside the mill, where the monsters lurk, to an inside moment of human revelry. The blow the monsters strike will not be shown. In denying us the view of the hit, we are robbed of the relief of its conclusion; instead, our anxiety worsens as we wonder what else is coming. The violence these stalking vampires do will be grisly, leaving gaping wounds in necks and jaws. Yet it is the threat of their cannibalizing Samuel’s music — and thereby Black culture — for their insatiable conquest that is the most rattling. 

Sinners is a stupendous and scary movie.

For those with no interest in subtext, Sinners can function as a solidly scary vampire movie in the vein of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn, which also featured brothers trapped overnight in a club by ravenous vampires. Coogler’s riff on that idea is enriched by the period drama that is the first act, building intrigue with the Smokestack Twins’ notorious reputation, the tension over Samuel’s desire to chase the music despite his preacher father’s warning that it’s the devil’s journey, and the women who want these men, despite the obstacles of reputation, racism, and husbands. Then, the heart-pumping music that plays within the film, sung by heroes and villains alike, brings a greater resonance to its drama and horror.

Moving deeper into the movie’s meaning, it’s easy to imagine that Coogler and Jordan are reflecting, through the lens of horror, their own experiences in Hollywood. Together, they’ve made five films, including Creed III, which Jordan directed; each one centered on Black heroes and Black culture. Like the twins and Samuel, they are building something for their community, by their community. And they are doing so in an industry in which Black characters have long been denied the spotlight by a studio system run predominantly by white men.

Take for example, Coogler and Jordan’s Black Panther, the box office smash that finally put a Black hero in the lead, casting the late Chadwick Boseman, but only after 17 MCU films preceded it. For Sinners to focus on a blues musician reflects the historical cannibalization of Black culture within American art, particularly in music. The birth of rock n’ roll is often credited to Elvis, but his inspirations were Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Big Mama Thornton. More recently, though Black artists pioneered the genres of hip hop and rap, a series of controversies — involving Macklemore and Kendrick Lamar, Miley Cyrus and Nicki Minaj — have centered on how white performers seem to have a critical advantage in this space, often getting Grammy notice over their Black peers or influences.

This reality plays into Remmick’s hunger and the symbolism of the gold coins that he carries as a lure. Just let him in, and the gold is yours. But through Sinners, Coogler and Jordan warn the true cost of such a Faustian deal could be your creative soul. This rich white man views them not as artists, but as commodities to be acquired, not treasured.

In that, Sinners is more than a hell of a thrilling vampire movie. Like Black Panther, it expands beyond the expectations of its genre to become a magnificent film, emanating with spirit, power, and purpose. Smoothly blending vampire horror into a unique tale of regret, resilience, and redemption, Coogler and Jordan have made a cinematic marvel that is terrifying, satisfying, and unforgettable. 

UPDATE: Apr. 15, 2025, 2:47 p.m. EDT This article was originally published on April 10, 2025. It has been updated to include current screening information.

Sinners is now in theaters.