SINNERS Is Fun; Not Profound

Hype vs. Quality

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners isn’t trying to reinvent vampire lore so much as reclaim it, anchoring its fangs in Southern soil, gospel chords, and blood-soaked juke joints. Starring Michael B. Jordan in dual roles as twin brothers navigating the supernatural underbelly of 1930s Mississippi, the film is lush, fast-paced, and unmistakably cool. But for all its atmosphere and symbolism, Sinners isn’t as deep as it looks. It's a stylish genre flick, sometimes stirring, occasionally heavy-handed, but mostly just an entertaining ride.

When I first saw the trailer, I was disappointed. It looked flat, like another mid-tier studio attempt at social horror with a few fangs thrown in. But then something strange happened: a groundswell of genuine word-of-mouth—not just critics or influencers—started to change the narrative. And, oddly enough, what finally got me into the theater instead of waiting for it to stream was a candid TikTok of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick walking out of the film, practically glowing, saying how much fun it was and how we need movies like this. That convinced me.

And yes, it is fun. It’s just not profound.

In retrospect, though, I’m not even sure that Kevin Bacon video was real. Maybe it was. But maybe it was cooked up by a room full of marketing execs and studio strategists who know exactly how to manufacture buzz. We can’t trust Rotten Tomatoes anymore. Studios game the system. And the marketing machines behind these films are increasingly comfortable manipulating perception, telling us something is the greatest ever before we’ve had a chance to decide for ourselves. So how are we supposed to trust anything anymore?

Sinners’ plot is built around Smoke and Stack, identical twins estranged by years and ideology, returning home to open a juke joint. It’s a promising premise: Black horror set in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. And Coogler, to his credit, lets the setting speak. The film is rich with texture, sweat, smoke, dirt, lace, blood. Everything glows with menace.

But the deeper social commentary often feels submerged. The script nods toward systemic racism, colorism, and generational trauma, but it rarely lingers there. Characters deliver lines that hint at depth, then move on. One minute we’re reckoning with sharecropper superstition, the next we’re mid-air in a slow-motion bloody vampire fight. The tonal swings aren’t fatal, but they flatten the emotional weight. Coogler seems torn between homage and innovation, caught between Blacula and Blade.

And to be honest, I’m tired of cartoonishly racist white villains. I get it. Racism is real. But turning white characters into hissable caricatures doesn't feel like catharsis anymore. It feels like cliché. Vampires, after all, are already the perfect metaphor for whiteness: pale, privileged, and parasitic. What better appropriation of a traditionally white horror trope than to flip the narrative? Films like Blacula (1972) and Ganja & Hess (1973) did that decades ago, and they did it with style and subtext. They let Black Americans see themselves in the genre not just as survivors, but as mythmakers.

Black history is American history. I'm not interested in stories that keep insisting these are separate things. Not every Black-led film needs to foreground trauma or victimization. And Sinners does offer something different: it centers on Black joy, Black cool, Black power. That should be enough.

Still, I’m not personally a fan of genre films for genre’s sake. I don’t like jump scares, and I don’t care about horror tropes unless they’re transcended. Sinners is being marketed as though it does exactly that, elevates the genre, says something lasting. But despite moments that try to blend high concept with bold style—like bridging Irish folk music with a futuristic Black electric guitarist—the film, and even more so its marketing campaign, ultimately reinforces a more manipulated truth: that popularity is being valued over quality, and that aesthetic spectacle is being mistaken for thematic depth.

Yet, Sinners has its moments. The soundtrack is a moody triumph, a fusion of Delta blues, horror stings, and trap bass that makes the film feel both historic and contemporary. Jordan is compelling in both roles, but he shines especially as Smoke, the more bruised and brooding of the two. His performance brushes up against a deeper conversation about what Black survival has cost, and what it might still require.

What’s missing is a sense of consequence. Death doesn’t sting the way it should. The allegory flickers, then fades. The film moves at the pace of a two-hour trailer—cut so tight it feels like Coogler didn’t fully trust the script to breathe. We’re left with blood, style, and one hell of a final cameo, but not the lasting chill that the best horror leaves behind.

Sinners doesn’t redefine the genre, but it gives it new rhythm. It’s a lot of fun. And in an era of self-serious horror, that might be enough.