“Sinners” is an all out experience. Usually, you can have your undead and zombies and the like, but the tone set by writer-director Ryan Coogler in this vampire-horror thriller is very captivating. The storyline just pulls you in. It is kind of weird seeing Michael B. Jordan and another Michael B. Jordan as twin brothers fighting the undead in Mississippi circa 1932. This is one I definitely recommend seeing in a movie theater instead of streaming at home.
I don’t want to give too many storyline twists away because I don’t want to spoil the “Sinners” experience for moviegoers.
Just know I admired the heck out of this action vampire tale. It’s very well done and it’ll really appeal to fans of the fang-tooth genre. I enjoyed this period monster drama because it takes viewers to a different plane of existence.
I must admit “Sinners” made my skin crawl at times because I was so uncomfortable with what was unfolding on the screen. I wouldn’t call it a good date movie, for sure. It featured top-notch casting for everyone in the acting troupe. That includes, in addition to Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld (“True Grit,” “The Edge of Seventeen”) as Mary and Jack O’Connell (“Unbroken”) as Remmick. It was really cool seeing how Jordan played two roles. He put enough nuance in each character, Smoke and Stack, so audience members could easily tell them apart. I liked this one because it was gritty like Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark” of 1987. Both films use a different kind of nomenclature. This horror tale unfolds during the Great Depression, of all things. So I was thinking, the Great Depression and vampires on the loose. They might look in the mirror and say, “What else can go wrong with my life?”
As much as I complain about not liking horror movies, I’ll see “Sinners” again. They usually scare me to death, but “Sinners” pulled me in because it’s so well done.
Grade: A
