Review: Sinners (2025)

Sinners is a tour de force from Ryan Coogler, the director of Creed and Black Panther. The movie takes the viewers on a magical mystery tour of music and horror that spans 24 hours in Clarksdale, Mississippi during the early 1930s. The film is so vast and ambitious in its scope that it's almost impossible to fully wrap one's arms around it in a single viewing. Against the setting is the segregated Deep South at a time when racial tensions were high, we meet two brothers (twins, both played by Michael B. Jordan) who have taken their future in their own hands and tried to forge a path for themselves outside of the law. But that's just part of this tale, which is also about the blues and the rich history of American folklore and occult beliefs that have been bleeding into one another for hundreds of years. African traditions meld with those of Ireland, with Native American culture adding seasoning, too.  At the center of the story is a burgeoning bluesman (Miles Caton), the son of a preacher man who has the rare gift to move people with his music. But is his gift from The Lord or from a darker power? 

Like many, I have been obsessed with the crossroads myth. The story goes that Robert Johnson, a struggling blues musician who worked the plantation fields in rural Mississippi during the early 1930s, went down to the crossroads in the middle of the night and struck a deal with the devil in exchange for talent and fame. This legend, which became the foundational cornerstone of rock and roll decades after Johnson's death, embodies a timeless superstition that has been a part of humanity for as long as we've been around, but the message remains the same: fame doesn't come without a price, and if you make a deal with the devil, the devil always wins. Robert Johnson died at the age of 27--a notable number--and has become either a patron saint or a cautionary tale for aspiring musicians all over the world. 

This is the stage for Sinners, which is the crossroads myth blown up into something even larger, yet deeply rooted in an understanding of the people who lived in the region at this time, their aspirations, and their innermost beliefs and fears. In the hands of Ryan Coogler, it becomes an onion with layer upon layer of meaning and metaphor, some of which is obvious and some of which is not. But Sinners never feels out of reach, and the themes, some of which are deeply subliminal, resonate on a subconscious level. 

This is Coogler's first non-franchise film work since 2013's Fruitvale Station, and it's a reminder of what he's capable of when he's given the control to tell a story that doesn't take place in pre-established cinematic worlds. Sinners is the work of an auteur, a filmmaker with a unique perspective, vision, and style. His fingerprints are on every frame of the film, in every line of dialogue, and even on the soundtrack, which hits with the force of a freight train. Coogler brings his point of view to the film, and his choices and decisions inform the entire movie in ways that simply aren't possible in franchise films that must exist between predetermined parameters. No such boundaries exist here. 

Near the middle of the movie, a powerful scene illustrates how the music of those that have "the gift" transcends space and time, breaking down the walls of reality as we know it and entering into the realm of the mystical. It's the best example I've ever seen of what that transcendence actually looks and feels like. Volumes have been written about the mystical power of music and its ability to heal, to move, and to tap into something spiritual and ecstatic in our beings--the soul, if you will--but I've never seen it captured and harnessed like Coogler has here, riding it like a bucking beast from the dimension between our realm and the realm beyond. After all, that's what the crossroads tale is all about: finding the place where the barrier between our world and the world we cannot touch is at its weakest. The scene is a stunning moment in a movie that has several of them. In the capable hands of Coogler, the myth has been blown up into a parable that touches on race, crime, ambition, love, and (especially) spirituality. In the film as in our culture, music has the power to lower the barrier between worlds, but there are consequences. What if the devil came to claim that power? 

Ryan Coogler has made billions of dollars for movie studios with his franchise movies, but none of them touch the raw danger and power of Sinners, his own creation, which crackles and hums like an exposed line of electricity. He's brought this story to life on film, shooting the movie in several formats, including 70mm for IMAX. The result is something literally larger than life, a vision that threatens to swallow the viewer whole. 

Sinners is a tale we all know because it's been with us for millennia, but we've never seen it brought to life (or un-life) quite like this before. Coogler has added something visceral and powerful to the occult legend of the crossroads, and just like the real myth that informs it, it is not easily defined. To call Sinners a horror movie is to do it a disservice. It's also a work of historical fiction, so accurate that it approaches the biographical. And yet it's a crime film, a history of American music, and a story about family. Sinners contains multitudes, and Ryan Coogler has delivered one of the best and most powerful films in recent memory--one that showcases what a director at the peak of his powers can accomplish through sound and vision. For those that believe in the myth and the power of the crossroads, or at least what the legend represents, one can't help but wonder if Coogler himself has somehow tapped into that ancient power to bring Sinners to life. 

Highly recommended.