Sinners (2025)

This may be the first movie that I’ve seen where I feel like it’s not long enough. Grappling with this issue of assimilation versus holding onto your own ancestral identity is a really difficult thing and to eloquently pose it as a horror film is very impressive. To be honest, I think this movie does put too much cynicism on those who want to assimilate I feel like the one character we really have is Mary but she doesn’t even come off as someone who assimilates she just feels to have chose to go to a different culture. I don’t understand why they make her character a quarter black but then choose Hailee Steinfeld to play her like I get you want more nuance where the character could be accepted by a white community but she just looks Jewish. That was really confusing to me in terms of what was her purpose.

The movie itself has a lot of good scares, but that’s not the focus and I appreciate that. I really like how this movie starts so fixated on building the legend of the smokestack twins and they’re played by Michael B Jordan, who just always has that pull when he’s on screen, but then so gradually the movie shifts, you’re focused to Sammy and before you even realize it, he’s the center of the film. This alone shows how good Coogler is as a director.

The visuals in this movie are untouched by anything I’ve ever seen before. I think the town they go into is very visually appealing, but then the Juke joint is so mesmerizing when everyone dancing. It really immerses you as a viewer.

I love Annie’s character, I respect her want to die before they take her memories, but I also don’t like how it is putting those who are true to their ancestors tradition as more pure. Where we’re talking about those who hold onto their roots are the light while those who assimilate are literally vampires, I don’t know if they mean that they literally are sucking the culture from people or stealing the culture and sinfully claiming it as their own. I can’t imagine that that’s what they’re going for, but if it is and it very easily can be construed this way, I think that’s fucked up. Arguably this is where the Mary character could’ve been a much better representative of what that side could be without being vampires. They didn’t go down that route and I’m disappointed about that. I wish instead the focus was how she was raised white but then word got out about her grandfather being black and she was shunned from the white community and then forced to assimilate into the black culture. They didn’t do that, instead they made her a chameleon-like character and I think that’s dumb, respectfully.

This was a great movie, not perfect, but for any movie that attempts to navigate genuine social questions, it’s impossible to be