When Ryan Coogler releases a film, the world listens.
But with Sinners, Coogler doesn’t just invite audiences to listen — he invites us to take ownership of our experiences, talents, stories and heal.
Set in 1932 Mississippi, Sinners masterfully blends horror, historical reflection, and metaphysical speculation into a new genre conversation: Meta-Phy-Fi — metaphysical science fiction infused with ancestral memory, spirituality, and cultural allegory.
At the heart of Sinners is a story of twin brothers (played by Michael B. Jordan) who return to Mississippi to open a juke joint, only to find themselves confronting a vampiric evil that threatens their family and community. But these aren't just any vampires — they're predators, feeding on the lifeblood of a Black community to maintain its dignity, spirit, and survival against systemic and supernatural oppression.
Through the haunting sounds of Delta blues, the thick Southern air of memory, and gorgeously saturated 70mm cinematography, Sinners becomes more than a story about monsters — it becomes a ritual of reclamation.
Most scenes are layered with social, historical andd spiritual references:
The pristine white church as costume referencing respectability & white proximity.
The segregated marketplace.
The juke joint as a sanctuary representing autonomy and ownership.
Music as a portal to ancestral power.
Vampirism as a metaphor for exploitative systems and people draining communities.
Coogler’s vision is not about rehashing pain for spectacle. Coogler uses genre not to escape history but to reframe it, offering both a mirror and a medicine. By weaving the supernatural with the all-too-real social dynamics of the Jim Crow South, Sinners shows us that even in the true horrors of The American South, there was and is a luminous, unbreakable spirit in its people and descendants. There is no force — human or otherwise — that could extinguish that spirit.
Not to mention, reimagining these stories through the film’s metaphysical lens, is evidence that memory itself is a weapon against erasure and gives us a blueprint for collective healing.
This film doesn’t just entertain; it functions as a communal catharsis (especially the last act) — a reminder that storytelling itself is a sacred technology, capable of preserving wisdom, resisting erasure, and recharging a weary spirit.
In the tradition of Afro-surrealism, Black speculative fiction, and the griot’s calling, Sinners arrives as a contemporary parable. We are the descendants of survivors. We are the keepers of the flame. We are our ancestors' wildest dreams, and their most powerful songs.
This isn’t just cinema. This is ceremony.
P.S. Spin-offs I’m wishing to see
Smoke & Stack takes on Gangs of Chicago
Choctaw Vampire-Slayers
Sammy At The Crossroads
Rammick’s Conversion