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This week we review Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. Is this movie cursed, or is Horror Movie Talk cursed? Stay tuned to find out.
Synopsis
Sinners stars Michael B Jordan and Michael C Jordan as twin brothers Smoke and Stack returning from Chicago with ill gotten gains to their hometown in rural prohibition era Mississippi. They immediately work on establishing their own juke joint to entertain and profit off the locals. They go around town recruiting old friends and relatives to help and successfully have a grand opening. When the music pierces the time and space as it is prone to do, it captures the attention of nearby evil… things. Wacky hijinx ensue.
Review of Sinners
Ryan Coogler writes and directs his first horror film coming off of his success with blockbusters like Black Panther and Creed. Here he obviously draws inspiration from Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn, where it feels like one genre and then suddenly shifts into a horror film. However, we are given fair warning from the opening scene that shit is about to go down.
There is a lot going on in this film. It explores a lot of ideas about good and evil, guilt, exploitation, racism, the transcendence of music, and pro tips on how to eat pussy. Not all of these themes are fully explored or necessarily land, but I have to respect the ambition and swing for the fences attitude of Coogler with this film.
The film does have a great cast, with fully fleshed out characters and relationships. It spend a lot of time with the setup so that when the killing starts to happen there are real stakes (no pun intended). It feels like a Stephen King novel in the best way.
A large element of the film is the music, with several musical sequences featuring blues, folk music, and weird afro-blues-rock-hiphop-pop fusion. The musical director on the film is swedish composer Ludwig Göransson, which is probably the most promising new film composer in recent years having scored The Mandelorian, Oppenheimer, Black Panther, and more. In my opinion, he is out of place here, and a lot of the musical score seems out of place and distracting. For a film about delta blues and juke joints, they seem almost embarrassed to include a lot of it.
Overall, the film was very good. It held my attention, features a setting and characters that are interesting, and delivers some great monster moments.
Score
9/10
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