(Left) Michael B. Jordan in ‘Sinners’. Photo: Warner Bros.
‘Sinners’ receives 8.5 out of 10 stars.
Opening in theaters April 18 is ‘Sinners,’ directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Miles Caton, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, Li Jun Li, and Delroy Lindo.
Initial Thoughts
Michael B. Jordan as Smoke and Stack in Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Sinners,’ a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Director Ryan Coogler and his muse/partner Michael B. Jordan are now five for five. Following ‘Fruitvale Station,’ ‘Creed,’ and the two ‘Black Panther’ entries (yes, we’ll stand up for ‘Wakanda Forever’ despite anti-MCU sentiment in the critical community), ‘Sinners’ is another outright winner for the filmmaker and star, and even better, it’s a wholly original piece of material that’s also ambitious, audacious, and at times even transcendent – not to mention a wildly smart genre hybrid.
Once again, Coogler and company have taken populist entertainment – this time mixing the horror genre with the historical drama – and infused it with social commentary, spiritual themes, action beats, and an almost poetic tribute to the time-bending power of music. The film has its flaws, but so much of it works so well, from the cast to the music to the incredible production design to the overall atmosphere – that you’ll walk out of ‘Sinners’ feeling like you’ve seen one of the most unique movies of the year.
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Story and Direction
(L to R) Delroy Lindo, Michael B. Jordan and director Ryan Coogler in Warner Bros. Pictures’ Sinners’ a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
As ‘Sinners’ begins, an opening narration tells us that some people have such a powerful gift of making music that it can “pierce the veil” between the worlds of the living and the dead. With that, we see a bloodied and beaten young man, who we will come to know as Preacher Boy Sam (Miles Caton), appear at the door of the church where his father is pastor. He’s carrying the broken neck of a guitar, and his father admonishes him to “leave those sinning ways.”
The movie then flashes back to “one day earlier” in the town of Clarksdale, Mississippi. The year is 1932. Returning on this day to the area’s Black community are brothers “Smoke” and “Stack” Moore – the “SmokeStack Twins” – both played by Michael B. Jordan. With their expensive suits and car, as well as the wads of cash in their pockets, they immediately stand out from the impoverished community of laborers and sharecroppers around them. Smoke, who’s tougher and more business-minded, and Stack, who is more jovial and reckless, are back in town after spending years away, first fighting in World War I and then finding their way to Chicago, where they allegedly made their fortune working for Al Capone.
Their first action upon returning to Clarksdale is to purchase an abandoned mill outside town from a man who may or may not be a KKK leader (“The Klan doesn’t exist anymore,” he unconvincingly tells them). They aim to turn the mill into a juke joint and open it that night, with entertainment to be provided by old blues musician Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and the twins’ cousin, Preacher Boy Sam, for whom the word “soulful” doesn’t begin to describe his ability to sing and play the blues.
‘Sinners’ unpacks its story and characters – which include Smoke’s former flame, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), who knows magic and who shares a tragic past with Smoke, as well as Stack’s old girlfriend, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who is part Black but looks white enough that their relationship might well have caused a scandal – in leisurely, novelistic fashion. But it’s never anything but fascinating to watch, thanks to the sharply drawn characters and pungent dialogue in Coogler’s screenplay, his fluid direction, Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s stunning cinematography, and the textured, incredibly detailed production design by Hannah Beachler. Then there’s the music – a combination of Ludwig Göransson’s original score and old blues standards that is as haunting as it is evocative.
Miles Caton as Sammie Moore in Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Sinners,’ a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
It’s that music – particularly the music performed by Preacher Boy Sam – that attracts not just a boisterous crowd to Smoke and Stack’s juke joint that night but fuels one of the most incredible sequences you’ll see in a movie this or any other year. Music, we’re told, will bring together the spirits of both the past and the future – which it does in a breathtaking sequence that ricochets through both the history of music and the Black experience in one gloriously kaleidoscopic dance of images that is almost transcendent in its power.
But the music attracts other forces from the realm of the dead as well…and since the trailers already give it away, it’s okay to say here that the juke joint soon finds itself under siege by a trio of vampires, led by Remmick (Jack O’Connell), who quickly go about turning the customers and the Moores’ dwindling band of friends and family into creatures of the night. “It’s better this way,” says one character who has been transformed late in the film, suggesting that Remmick is creating a new species for which boundaries of race, color, and gender have no meaning.
That’s just one of the intriguing ideas that Coogler springs on us during the course of ‘Sinners,’ and if anything this densely packed film has almost too many of them. Questions of race, identity, history, violence against Black bodies, and the power of art flow liberally through the film, which is by turns exhilarating, frightening, erotic, distressing, and poignant. The introduction of a supernatural terror halfway through a historical drama is a bit abrupt, and the third act feels both rushed and drawn out as the climactic confrontation with the vampires leads to a fistful of additional endings and mid-credits sequences (a bit of an MCU hangover for Coogler, perhaps). But even when it wobbles slightly down the stretch, ‘Sinners’ doesn’t feel like any other movie you’re likely to see anytime soon.
Cast and Performances
(L to R) Michael B. Jordan as Smoke, Wunami Mosaku as Annie, Hailee Steinfeld as Mary, Michael B. Jordan as Stack, Miles Caton as Sammie and Omar Benson Miller as Cornbread in Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Sinners,’ a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In a career already full of sparking performances, ‘Sinners’ may contain Michael B. Jordan’s best work yet. Assisted by seamless visual effects, he delivers two fully-rounded performances as Smoke and Stack, differentiating the two brothers with subtle changes in tone, speech, and body language, while firmly delineating the deep bond between the two.
Smoke has been hardened by the world, doesn’t believe much in magic or the spiritual, and has no time for fun; he thinks that accumulating power (mostly in the form of cash) will give him freedom. Stack is much more hedonistic, given to flamboyance in his clothing, spending, and behavior, and much more in tune with earthly pleasures. Both men’s beliefs are tested and both are deeply changed by the end of the film, and it’s a tribute to Jordan’s incredible skills that you always feel you are watching two separate personalities on their own journeys.
Hailee Stenfield as Mary in Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Sinners,’ a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
While ‘Sinners’ showcases Jordan’s accomplishment, the rest of the cast is just as powerful. 19-year-old Miles Caton is a real find, providing not just a complex performance as Sam but a singing voice that is nothing short of awesome, providing a credible basis for the film’s mystical view of music. Delroy Lindo is nothing short of great (as usual) as Delta Slim, the blues player at the other end of his career who has seen it all. And while the vampires are not given as much ground to develop as characters, Jack O’Connell’s Remmick is a deft combination of malice, charisma, and temptation, with the story showing how these monsters can still be stirred by music as well (especially in one eerie sequence involving an Irish folk song).
Importantly, every woman in ‘Sinners’ also gets her due, from Wunmi Mosaku’s no-nonsense Annie to Hailee Steinfeld’s Mary, both of whom are courageous, confident, sexually liberated, and capable of moving on from deep tragedies in their lives. Mosaku’s performance is full of texture, compassion, and depth, while Steinfeld succeeds in nailing the role of a woman who is trapped between two worlds but knows which one she feels more at home with. Also notable is Li Jun Li (‘Babylon’) as Grace Chow, who runs grocery stores in town with her husband Bo (Yao) and is as deft in handling her business with both Blacks and whites as she is in fighting vampires.
Final Thoughts
Michael B. Jordan as Smoke in Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Sinners’ a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Eli Adé. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
‘Sinners’ is a luscious, genuinely cinematic experience that deserves every inch of the IMAX screen you should see it on. Even if we wish the horror elements were introduced a little more organically, and even if the film’s closing sequences don’t work as effectively as they could, one can still feel Coogler’s earnest, heartfelt search for truth throughout: What makes anyone truly free? Love? Power? Money? Talent? What does it mean to be free if you know that freedom is merely a façade?
These are the questions ‘Sinners’ raises and leaves one pondering as the credits roll. This thoughtfully conceived, masterfully executed epic doesn’t provide all the answers, but instead brings the viewer on a journey that is haunting, terrifying, emotionally resonant, and powerful in its exploration of community, shared experience, and how the incursion of evil can threaten to rip those apart.
“Dance with the devil.”
Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome… Read the Plot
What is the plot of ‘Sinners’?
Two brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932, now wealthy and intent on opening a juke joint in their hometown. But as they open the doors of their new establishment, sinister forces begin to converge upon them and their community.
Who is in the cast of ‘Sinners’?
- Michael B. Jordan as Smoke and Stack Moore
- Hailee Steinfeld as Mary
- Miles Caton as Sam Moore
- Jack O’Connell as Remmick
- Wunmi Mosaku as Annie
- Jayme Lawson as Pearline
- Omar Benson Miller as Cornbread
- Li Jun Li as Grace Chow
- Delroy Lindo as Delta Slim
Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Sinners,’ a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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