Rating: R | Runtime: 137 minutes
Release Date: April 18th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Warner Bros.
Director(s): Ryan Coogler
Writer(s): Ryan Coogler

We was never gonna be free.

World War I veterans Smoke and Stack Moore (Michael B. Jordan) left Mississippi behind to find greener pastures up north in Chicago. It worked for a while, but, despite leaving Jim Crow, they still weren’t free. So, as they soon explain, the twins chose the “devil they knew” and returned home with stolen money and liquor to open a juke joint at the old sawmill down by the plantations where they grew up. This would be their tiny patch of land to live their dream of being beholden to no one but themselves. A haven for the Black community surrounding them to escape the fields and the danger of trying to exist amongst white people who are one lie away from destroying their lives.

That question of freedom remains, however. The brothers understand the tenuous nature of their entrepreneurship. They even threaten the racist landowner selling them the land that none of his Klan brethren better step one toe over the property line lest they get a bullet in the head. They take the chance, though, because they have each other’s backs. And they have a slew of friends ready to help and share in the profits of what could be their sanctuary from having to constantly look over their shoulders before every sip of their drink. Because this can be their church of the soul away from the oppressive nature of God and the twisted temptations of the Devil. Away from the false safety of laws and faith so they might simply exist solely for themselves.

Premised on the idea that evil seeks out genius as a means to possess it, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners introduces a proverbial pig to the slaughter via young Sammie (Miles Caton), Smoke and Stack’s cousin. Spending every free second he has on playing the guitar when not working the fields or assisting his pastor father (Saul Williams), music has become his God. It’s what he worships and proselytizes—a fact that has he dad worrying about the Devil taking his boy’s soul (because everything that isn’t what he preaches as salvation must therefore be corrupt). But Sammie doesn’t care. It’s his passion and his cousins are giving him his big break that night to christen their new club. So, he’ll play his heart out. He’ll inspire and move all in attendance. And he’ll inevitably bring that evil to their door.

Beyond the metaphor of art (the music played by Sammie and Delroy Lindo’s Slim and sung by Jayme Lawson’s Pearline) and love (whether Wunmi Mosaku’s Annie as the mother of Smoke’s lost child or Hailee Steinfeld’s Mary as the woman Stack wants to protect by pushing her away) as freedom, is also the allure of power. That’s what Smoke and Stack crave and see money as an avenue towards achieving it. Because, while all the people they recruit are friends (rounded out by Chinese grocers Bo and Grace Chow, played by Yao and Li Jun Li, and their bouncer in Omar Benson Miller’s Cornbread), it’s the cash that gets them all to push aside their current means of compensation. Money has sway. It allows them to collect those necessary to make dream into reality.

But there’s also the power of privilege. Mary passing as white while still being family with this Black community. The Klan putting on smiles during the day to put their would-be victims in place for slaughter at night. The twins’ gangster reputation keeping strangers in line. And, off-screen, the mostly rich and white executive suite types bankrolling musicians and athletes as property to the point where their songs and stats are no longer their own. This very country was built on stolen land upon the backs of the people most persecuted by its justice system even as the number of so-called minorities living here almost equal the number of white citizens who somehow believe “equality” means maintaining the same exclusive “ol’ boys” club … just without the hoods. Even those offering a helping hand demand a pound of flesh for the trouble.

Therein lies the beauty of Remmick (Jack O’Connell). Here is an Irish immigrant vampire who has lived long enough to have seen the cycle of prejudice and hate revolve. He was its victim at one point too. He’s seen how the world refuses to change as much as move the compass point elsewhere for a spell in order to grant reprieves that last just as long as is necessary before spinning back around. What he offers isn’t money, but time. Time to see the chains passed onto another because the idea that they can actually be broken is futile. Remmick is temptation, but also yet another figure seeking control. Because he doesn’t give everyone a choice. And, while his memories will be transferred to those he turns, it’s their memories that matter most to him. He doesn’t want their bodies. He wants the beauty within. A Generative AI looking to consume humanity whole.

Is it better that he was a victim too? Should Smoke, Stack, and the others embrace what he’s offering because it might grant them the longevity to see their would-be assailants burn? It might be to some … if they were allowed the room to consider it rather than merely get seduced into volunteering their vulnerability for the promise of a distraction they’re helpless to combat. Not Slim, though. Not Pearline. They understand their worth (even if the world doesn’t and they’ve suffered as a result). The music sings within them and they will not give that away freely. Slim talks about surviving demons before—not supernatural ones like Remmick either, so the sentiment hits deep. Sammie is a different story. He’s still young. Impressionable. Lorded over by his father and Smoke—men who believe they know better. The fear might still win out to let his guitar go.

That’s the central fight here. Not an exciting and emotional last stand via a microcosmic civil war pitting undead friends and family against the living. Not the resonant allusions to emancipation and civil rights. Not even God versus muse. Those things all play their role, but they’re different examples of the battlefields that pit free will against nihilism. And it’s about choosing how you die just as much as choosing how you live too. Look no further than Smoke and Annie to witness devotion to a truth they might not always be brave enough to speak aloud, but one they’ve held onto ever since they buried their child. Because it’s the specter of death that often provides us the meaning we need to survive. Not as something to reject, but something to embrace.

Isn’t that a form of immortality too? To believe in an afterlife? Of course it is. So too is legacy—leaving this world with the evidence of your life through your art. Coogler gives them all an equal piece to this puzzle as a means to portray that there isn’t just one way to life. You can turn your pain into a creative outlet. You can turn it into purpose through love. And you can do the same through hate. The shepherd, the flock, and the monster: we must all choose which we’re to become and, chances are, we still will be at the mercy of someone else anyway. But as Stack and Sammie reminisce, there will be a moment upon each path that makes it all worth the struggle. An eternity for those who’ve died too soon. A brief few hours for those who cannot die. Or a, simply put, life well lived.

So, do yourself a favor and stay through the credits for an epilogue that truly hits on the ideas Coogler puts on-screen via the excellent gore-filled genre trappings of a vampire horror. Stay until the very end for a nice little musical sendoff too. Because no matter how good Sinners is on the surface (the marriage of music with Ludwig Göransson’s score, visuals with Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s cinematography, and performance with an impressive cast expressing themselves through movement as much as words), its power lies deeper. Not as a means to manipulate through cinematic tricks or soap-box declarations, but to inspire and grant us permission to set ourselves free from society, expectations, and doubts. After all, the only person who should control your life is you.

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(L to r) MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke, WUNMI 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. © 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.