Warning: This post contains spoilers for Sinners.
The entirety of Sinners may take place over the span of only 24 hours, but Ryan Coogler (Creed, Black Panther) sure manages to pack a punch into that timeframe. The writer-director’s first entirely original feature—i.e., one that’s not based on either real-life events or existing IP—blends elements of gangster action, period romance, historical drama, and supernatural horror into a thrilling story of survival in the Jim Crow South.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Sinners, now in theaters, revolves around twin brothers and World War I vets Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan on double duty) returning to their Mississippi Delta hometown of Clarksdale in 1932 after spending seven years making a pretty notorious name for themselves in Al Capone’s Chicago. They’re back, flush with cash, to open their own juke joint, one that will serve as a place where the local Black community can let loose amid a period of intense racial discrimination, economic hardship, and social injustice.
But first, they have to recruit a roster of old friends and family members—chief among them, their younger cousin Sammie (breakout Miles Caton in his big-screen debut), the preacher’s son and a blues prodigy—to help get their club off the ground on opening night. In fact, the movie opens with a flash forward to a bloodied and battered Sammie returning home the morning after and stumbling into his father’s church with the broken neck of a guitar in hand, a prologue that heralds the terrifying events that unfold at “Club Juke” after the sun goes down.
An accompanying narration recounts a legend that tells of musicians so gifted they can pierce the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead and conjure spirits from both the past and future. We learn this preternatural ability has the power to heal communities, but it can also attract evil. And Sammie just happens to have such a gift.
The Club Juke set-up
Roughly half of Sinners‘ two-hour-plus-runtime is consumed by Smoke and Stack’s preparations for the evening, beginning with the twins purchasing the old mill that will house the club from its condescending white owner Hogwood (David Maldonado). The brothers relay in no uncertain terms that Hogwood and his Klan buddies should stay the hell off their property—a threat that earns a sneering response about the KKK’s supposed dissolution and that comes back into play before the movie’s end.
By the time opening night is actually underway, we’ve been introduced to a variety of characters, from grizzled bluesman Delta Slim (a scene-stealing Delroy Lindo), to Chinese American grocer Bo Chow (Yao) and his wife Grace (Li Jun Li), to Smoke and Stack’s respective former flames, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) and Mary (Hailee Steinfeld). While Mary has multi-racial roots, she is also white-passing, a trait that is alluded to as the reason that Stack previously left her behind. It’s also what leads to a trio of white vampires, drawn to the celebration by Sammie’s transcendent musical talents, first getting a foothold in Club Juke.
Sinners plays by many of the traditional vampire rules, one of which being that the undead must be invited inside a building before entering it. So when head vampire Remmick (Jack O’Connell) and his two recent white recruits originally show up, Smoke and Stack are suspicious enough of their motives to turn them away. But after Mary goes outside to try to find out more about them, she herself is quickly turned into a vampire and becomes their weapon. She proceeds to use her established relationships to get invited back in before seducing, attacking, and turning Stack. It’s Stack’s death that leads to Smoke and his inner circle clearing out the club and all hell breaking loose as those who flee are also turned.
A bloody final battle
With a small horde of undead now at his disposal, Remmick, who is implied to have been born an Irishman before his transformation and is therefore familiar with subjugation and oppression, tries to lure the remaining survivors to join him by promising them the freedom and equality they’ve been denied by American society. However, what Remmick really wants is to co-opt Sammie’s music for his own means.
Realizing that the price of Remmick’s offer is their souls, the living make a desperate last stand that results in the gruesome deaths of everyone but Smoke and Sammie. While Smoke and Stack battle it out inside the club, Remmick confronts Sammie outside and reveals his true motives. Luckily, Sammie is able to wound him with his guitar before Smoke shows up to put a stake through his heart. The rest of the horde is then killed as the sun rises.
Smoke sends Sammie home, where we once again see the scene from the beginning play out, and then proceeds to prepare for yet another attack on the club by Hogwood and his KKK brethren. A shootout ensues during which Smoke manages to take out each and every one of his aggressors. However, he’s also mortally wounded in the process and dies on the scene.
The credits scenes
Although the battle against Remmick was won, we learn in a pivotal mid-credits scene that Smoke actually allowed vampire Stack to live and run away with Mary after making him promise to leave Sammie be. This twist plays out in a flash forward to 60 years later that reveals Sammie (now played by blues legend Buddy Guy) went on to become a famous and successful musician.
Vampire Stack and Mary, now decked out in their early ’90s finest, enter Sammie’s club and offer to make him immortal now that he’s nearing the end of his natural life. Sammie refuses and the three discuss that fateful night, with Sammie revealing that, before the horror began, that was the best day of his life. Stack agrees, noting that it was not only the last time he saw his brother and the sun, but also the last time he felt truly free.
There’s also a post-credits scene in which young Sammie is shown singing “This Little Light of Mine” in a sequence that implies he’s off to live his chosen life as a musician with the “light” of his musical talent to guide him.
