Sinners

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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Back when I was Publisher of Marvel Comics, I helped salvage a superhero known as Black Panther. That ultimately led to a movie franchise that has grossed over $2.2 billion worldwide. Much of Black Panther’s success goes to director Ryan Coogler, who had broken out with a small movie called “Fruitvale Station.” He has since had a winning streak with the “Creed” boxing movies.

Now, Coogler delivers a period horror film called “Sinners.” You can find it now on local movie screens.

As Vanity Fair points out, this is Coogler’s “first foray into writing and directing an original film not based on IP or a true story.” It adds, “‘Sinners’ reveals another side to this soulful director, who has crafted a Southern vampire thriller with much deeper ideas bubbling under the surface.” 

Vanity Fair’s Rebecca Ford posed the question: Could “Sinners” be our first real Oscar contender of the year?

The critics already love “Sinners.” It has an incredibly high Rotten Tomatoes score of 99%.

Even so, a Best Picture win would be an uphill climb. Genre/action movies aren’t traditional Oscar fare. And at its heart, “Sinners” is a vampire movie.

Yep, fangs and all.

Coogler has never won an Oscar, although “Black Panther” earned seven Oscar nominations (and won three), and its sequel, ”Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” was nominated for five Oscars and won for costume design. 

What makes “Sinners” different?

“If we’re looking at how vampire movies do at the Oscars,” says Ford, “a few have been nominated (just this past season ’Nosferatu’ landed four nominations; and 1994’s ’Interview with the Vampire’ was nominated for best art direction and best original score), but they haven’t … really broken through to Best Picture.” 

“Sinners” stars Coogler’s frequent collaborator Michael B. Jordan (the “Creed” films, among others). Here, Jordan plays a dual role as twins – one hard-nosed, the other a little bit crazy – who return to the South to open a juke joint in their hometown. 

Sonny Bunch of The Bulwark calls it “a joyously filthy movie: a celebration of the pleasures that come from art and life and living; a rejection of the sorrow that derives from hate and fear and loathing.”

He goes on to say, “Writer-director Ryan Coogler’s Depression-era vampire flick is both rooted in the ugly reality of the Jim Crow South and explodes into an exuberant fantasia about the power of music (and movies) to transcend space and time.”

As the story goes, Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore (both played by Jordan) return to their hometown in Mississippi with ill-gotten gains to open a juke joint. The key is their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), who can sing the blues with “a voice so pure it can pierce the cosmic veil.”

Sammie’s unique talent brings trouble in the form of Remmick (Jack O’Connell), an Irish vampire “whose status as undead leads to disconnection from the ancestral plain, meaning that he can never again see his loved ones … unless this music man can call them forth.”

And Remmick is willing to kill every person in this little town to make that happen.

O’Connell plays Remmick as “a sort of demented Lord of the Dance, doing Irish jigs in his own effort to conjure up the spirits of the past.”

“Through his vampirism, Remmick has appropriated the blues into his own work and given it a wicked tinge; he’s gained rhythm but still lacks the soul of the blues. For that, he’ll need Sammie’s skills.”

You’ll love the use of music in ’Sinners.’ Credit the first-rate score by two-time Oscar winner Ludwig Göransson (Oppenheimer,” “Black Panther”). As Bulwark describes it: “What we see is the cinematic representation of art as an idea, art on a continuum, art spanning the generations: from the tribal priests in Africa to the DJs spinning records in Brooklyn.”

You’ll love the characters – Smoke and Stack and Remmick and Sammie – even piano man Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and the bouncer Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) and estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) and ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) and singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson.)

Rotten Tomatoes sums it up: “A rip-roaring fusion of masterful visual storytelling and toe-tapping music, writer-director Ryan Coogler’s first original blockbuster reveals the full scope of his singular imagination.”

Sonny Bunch says, “ ‘Sinners’ is a crowd-pleasing historical romp; horrifying yet funny, haunted by the past but not beholden to it.”

I’d say it’s a different kind of vampire film, more akin to “The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck” or “Blacula” than “I Am Legend” or “Dracula.” 

Take a bite and see for yourself.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com