
Film Critic Cassandra Fong finds Sinners to be a simmering and luscious piece of modern cinema
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners has arrived like a thunderclap over the film world—a slow-burn epic cloaked in blood, blues, and brilliance. With this latest outing, Coogler doesn’t just direct a movie—he resurrects a time, a place, and a legacy, using horror not as spectacle, but as a mirror. Sinners isn’t simply a film you watch. It’s one you experience, feel, and eventually carry with you, long after the cinema lights rise.
Set against the humid backdrop of 1930s Mississippi Delta, Sinners casts Michael B. Jordan in a riveting dual role that feels like something out of film myth. As twin brothers Smoke and Stack, Jordan slips effortlessly between fire and restraint. It’s a performance that hums with tension and slow-simmering anguish, hinting at Oscar buzz that may already be gaining heat behind closed studio doors.
“Sinners isn’t simply a film you watch. It’s one you experience
Visually, Sinners is one of the most arresting films of the year. Shot in IMAX 65mm and Ultra Panavision 70, every frame looks like a living painting soaked in Southern humidity. Coogler’s lens loves the land—it captures the cracked wood of old juke joints, the fog-laced bayous, the sweat of survival, and the ghosts that haunt all three. This is a director not just honoring his own Southern roots but sanctifying them. And if the film’s visuals give it soul, its music gives it blood.
Ludwig Göransson’s score, laced with howls of harmonica and thundering bass lines, creates an atmosphere both ancient and alive. The soundtrack, already charting online, is more than a backdrop—it’s a second script. From the guttural cries of Brittany Howard to the smoky vocals of Rod Wave and Buddy Guy, Sinners brings the Delta blues roaring into modern myth. There are scenes where the music seems to possess the characters, bleeding through their fingertips, their eyes, their wounds.
“It’s no surprise that critics and fans alike have fallen under Sinners’ hypnotic spell
It’s no surprise that critics and fans alike have fallen under Sinners’ hypnotic spell. Rotten Tomatoes shows a towering 97% score, with Metacritic not far behind. What’s more telling, perhaps, is the reaction in theaters—audiences sitting in hushed silence, even after the credits roll. On PostTrak, the film boasts a 92% approval rating, and CinemaScore gave it the elusive “A,” a mark no horror film has touched in decades.
And yes, while vampires stalk its shadowy corners, Sinners has no interest in fang-and-cloak clichés. Instead, it weaponises the myth of the vampire as metaphor—an eerie, poetic commentary on cultural exploitation, generational trauma, and the cost of survival in a world that feeds on Black talent but rarely sees the soul behind it. It’s horror, yes—but horror of a much more intimate and insidious variety.
Coogler has crafted a film that flirts with the genre but dances beyond its borders. At moments, Sinners feels like a Southern Gothic fever dream. At others, a searing period drama. At its best, it is something rarer—a supernatural elegy for a culture too often buried before it’s ever heard. This is cinema that bites, bleeds, and—most crucially—burns.
Verdict
One thing is certain: Sinners will not be forgotten. It has staked its place not just in the 2025 awards conversation, but in the cultural consciousness. Whatever comes next for Coogler, for Jordan, and for the genre itself, this film will be the haunting benchmark. A sinner’s tale, perhaps—but told with the hand of a master.
4/5
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