NEW YORK (OSV News) — Considered strictly as a piece of cinema, the genre-mashing feature “Sinners” (Warner Bros.) can be acknowledged to be a successful production in several respects. But assessed ethically from the standpoint of a Scripture-based worldview, writer-director Ryan Coogler’s film is critically deficient.
An opening scene hints that what begins as a straightforward drama, set in 1930s Mississippi, is going to take on the characteristics of a horror film. And so it does.
Identical twins and World War I veterans Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” Moore – both played by Michael B. Jordan – return to their hometown in the Delta flush with the ill-gotten gains of their lives as gangsters in the Chicago of Al Capone. They intend to use the money to transform a disused local mill into a profitable juke joint.
This is good news for the brothers’ callow young cousin, Sammie (Miles Caton). A minister’s son, Sammie wants nothing to do with following in his father’s footsteps and instead hopes to capitalize on his skills as a guitarist to make a career for himself as a musician. (Somewhere the ghost of Al Jolson’s Jakie Rabinowitz from 1927’s “The Jazz Singer” is nodding empathetically.)
At first, all goes according to plan. Together with local pianist – and enthusiastic dipsomaniac – Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), Sammie captivates the new nightspot’s patrons. But, as the evening progresses, thematic gears shift and the crowd is suddenly targeted for slaughter by a horde of vampires, led by an undead Irishman called Remmick (Jack O’Connell).
For the most part, Coogler handles this potentially jarring transition with aplomb and the proceedings take on an eerily powerful atmosphere. Somewhat in the vein of auteur Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” (2017), occult tropes then become the springboard for an exploration of race relations, though this feels more tentative and even shallow here than in Peele’s work.
Along with the grisly aftermath of all the bloodsucking onslaughts that follow, Coogler introduces scenes of sexual interaction that range from the casual to the committed. While the participants in these encounters remain mostly clothed, little is left to the imagination and there’s a debased, wink-and-a-smile tone to the narrative’s treatment of them.
Coogler also indulges in some visceral racial wish fulfillment in a climactic scene in which Stack uses Army weapons he’s kept concealed since his service to mow down a group of Ku Klux Klansmen. The audience is implicitly invited to revel in the bigots’ doom.
The resolution of Sammie’s professional dilemma also sends a Gospel-discordant message.
The screenplay’s essential point in this regard is that the musical heritage of African Americans is the real source of their spiritual power. This theme has been touched on earlier as Sammie and Slim’s performance on stage evoked the presence of both ghosts from the past and figures from the future, a sort of blues-inspired Communion of Saints.
The script at least implies, moreover, that Christianity is an alien religion imposed on black people by colonizers and slave masters. The hoodoo practiced by Smoke’s estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), it’s suggested, is a more authentic option – though the efficacy of her spells is debated. Given all this, “Sinners” cannot be endorsed for viewers of any age.
The film contains misguided moral and religious values, much gory violence, numerous gruesome images, semi-graphic depictions of sexual activity, some of it aberrant, and of marital lovemaking, several uses of profanity, about a dozen milder oaths, brief coarse sexual references and constant rough and crude language. The OSV News classification is O – morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association rating is R – restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.