Director Ryan Coogler’s (Creed, Black Panther) new blockbuster, Sinners, has finally premiered, bringing a unique vision of vampire horror to cinemas. This horror-action period movie follows two gangster brothers (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who return to their hometown in hoping to turn over a new leaf. Unfortunately, their attempts to do so inadvertently attract a gang of vicious vampires who attempt to kill and feed on them and those around them.
Like Coogler’s other films, Sinners is a layered and emotional film with plenty of social commentary. The movie tells a sprawling and brutal story celebrating Black culture while exploring racial oppression through its human and demonic villains. There’s a lot to process in this movie, and now that it’s out in theaters, audiences can finally experience it and its powerful ending.
What’s the story?
Sinners shows Smoke and Stack returning to their hometown in 1930s Mississippi, where they plan to set up a juke joint out of an old mill using the money they gathered as gangsters in Chicago. As they try to get things ready, Smoke and Stack encounter figures from their past that still haunt them. Smoke reunites with his wife, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), with whom he had a child who died during infancy. Meanwhile, Stack encounters his ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who’s visiting town for the funeral of her mother, who took care of Smoke and Stack after their father’s death. Though Stack abandoned Mary and she has since married another man, Mary remains bitter over Stack, and they both have lingering feelings for each other.
By the end of the day, Smoke and Stack have hired multiple people in town to help get everything ready for opening night. This includes their cousin, Sammie, who has the power to make music that can conjure spirits from the past and future, as well as attract demons. Thus, when Sammie performs at the packed joint, he inadvertently attracts the evil vampire Remmick (Jack O’Connell), who had appeared at the home of two Ku Klux Klan members and turned them into his vampiric followers.
Following traditional rules, Remmick and his fellow vampires can’t enter Smoke and Stack’s joint without an invitation. To work around this, Remmick turns Mary into a vampire when she goes outside so she can infiltrate the party. Seducing Stack, Mary bites and kills him, turning him into a vampire as well. As the vampires turn more and more people to their side, Smoke and his survivors struggle to survive as paranoia builds. Eventually, when Remmick threatens the life of Grace’s (Li Jun Li) daughter, she angrily invites the vampires in, leading to a massive battle between them and the heroes, with Smoke and Sammie being the only survivors.
How does it end?
Though Smoke and Sammie succeed in killing Remmick once the sun rises, the former gets into a shootout with members of the Ku Klux Klan, as it was revealed that the man he bought the mill from was a leader of the KKK. Though Smoke is fatally shot, he succeeds in taking the attacking Klan members with him in an explosive and cathartic finale that puts a new spin on The Night of the Living Dead. Smoke also gets to reunite with Annie and their dead infant as he succumbs to his wounds.
At the same time, Sammie appears at his father’s church, where he is ordered to let go of his guitar and abandon his “sinful” musical ways. However, Sammie refuses and becomes a successful musician in the 1990s with a club named after his love interest, Pearline (Jayme Lawson), who died at the juke joint. This all seemed like the perfect place to end the film. But that changes fast.
A mid-credits scene shows Sammie visited by the vampiric Stack and Mary, who survived their battle in Clarksdale, despite Remmick’s death. While it seems like they have come for payback, it was revealed that Smoke spared Stack but made him promise to spare Sammie’s. Though Stack offers to make Sammie a vampire to give him immortality, the latter refuses. However, Sammie does grant Stack’s request to play music for him and Mary before they leave.
What does it all mean?
In Sinners, Remmick and his vampires embody the racial oppression directed toward Black people. They also offered Smoke, Stack, and their peers the chance to live an eternal life where they can be loved and treated equally by their fellow vampires. This seemed like a tempting offer for them, but as Stack stated in his final scene, the vampires were never truly free.
Like Sammie, Stack was only happiest just before the vampires had attacked, because he was still with his brother, and they could still go out into the sun. Stack and Mary are still bound to their undead bodies, forced to live their eternal lives in the shadows. But when Sammie plays his guitar for them, they all enjoy that brief sense of freedom his music provided for all at the juke joint.
It’s unknown what will become of Sammie, Stack, or Mary after Sinners. Like one of the Marvel films Coogler famously directed, this mid-credits scene seems to leave the door open for a sequel. At the same time, Sinners left its story on the best possible note for its characters. Sammie got to make a living playing the music he wanted to play, and Stack and Mary got to be together. It’s a tragic, surprising, and incredibly poignant ending that wraps everything up well while still leaving audiences wanting more.
Sinners is now in theaters.
