Ryan Coogler’s 2025 vampire horror film has already shattered box office records for the genre. Coogler, of course, is the acclaimed director of Creed, Black Panther, and its sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Under his direction, Sinners has quickly emerged as a contender for Academy Awards. The film unfolds as a startling parable about white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan, and the transformative power of music—specifically Delta Blues—as a force of resistance and exorcism.
Its allegorical nature is signaled immediately in a brief prologue: “There are legends of people born with a gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death conjuring spirits from the past and the future. . ..” From the outset, viewers are alerted that what follows is not merely a story but a mythic enactment, one that reveals hidden and uncomfortable truths alongside enduring strengths.
At the heart of the narrative is Sammie, a gifted young blues musician whose talent verges on the supernatural. The son of a Baptist minister, he is known as “Preacher Boy.” His cousins—identical twin gangsters “Smoke” and “Stack” (both portrayed by Michael B. Jordan)—return to their Mississippi hometown from Chicago in 1932 with plans to open a juke joint. There, however, they encounter a form of evil more insidious than anything they experienced working for Al Capone in the North: a vampire embodiment of the Ku Klux Klan, led by a mysterious Irishman named Remmick.
As a bloodthirsty Klansman driven by racism and greed, Remmick embodies the white supremacist urge to exploit and destroy Black cultural achievements. His Irish music lures listeners, yet his touch alone is enough to infect victims, transforming them into vampires. Their numbers grow at a terrifying pace.
Inside the juke joint, however, Preacher Boy counters with his own magic. His blues conjure ancestral spirits, who appear in traditional African garb, mingling with dancers in an atmosphere charged with sweat, alcohol, and raw sexuality. Recalling the evening years later, Preacher Boy—portrayed in this sequence by blues legend Buddy Guy—reflects, “it was the best day of my life.”
Everything reaches its climax in a violent confrontation: vampires swarm the juke joint, leading to its destruction and a final showdown between Preacher Boy and Remmick. For a time, it seems the Klansmen have prevailed. Yet Preacher Boy ultimately defeats Remmick, while “Smoke” kills the leader of the local Klan chapter. In this way, Preacher Boy’s power as an exorcist is at least partially affirmed.
Still, Sinners resists any one-dimensional reading. Its parable connects the African American struggle against white vampirism with broader histories of oppression and survival, including:
- The resistance of Native Americans, who as survivors of genocide developed means to neutralize “white blood-suckers.”
- The brutalities of slavery and the cotton economy.
- The prison chain gang system and the terror of lynching.
- The complex roles of mixed-race women, some of whom could “pass” as white, alongside their Aunt Jemima counterparts, confined to domestic labor yet equally sexual.
- Competing spiritual traditions—those of colonial missionaries, Black Baptists, the Klan, Native Americans, Voodoo, and even Satan worship.
- The place of Chinese immigrants, often positioned as bridges between Black and white communities.
For those who can stomach its gore, Sinners is both horrifying and revelatory. It insists that horror has been central to the Black historical experience—every bit as present as the beauty and resilience expressed through music. As Coogler himself explains, the Delta blues were created by artists “living under a back-breaking form of American apartheid,” and he describes the genre as “our country’s most important contribution to global popular culture.”
In that light, the film’s brutality is not gratuitous but emblematic. As a vampire horror story, Sinners is gruesome, but African American history has been far bloodier. Compared to that reality, the horror on screen feels restrained.
See for yourself.
About Things That Matter 