Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back. A film by Ryan Coogler, starring Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Li Jun Li, and Delroy Lindo.

There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true it can pierce the veil between life and death. Conjuring spirits from the past and the future, this gift can bring healing but it also attracts demons.

In 1932, twin brothers Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore (Michael B. Jordan) return to their Mississippi Delta hometown after years in Chicago. They purchase a sawmill and surrounding land from local landowner Hogwood (David Maldonado). After finalizing the deal, Smoke warns Hogwood that if he or any of his Klan associates are caught trespassing on their property, they won’t hesitate to shoot, despite Hogwood’s insistence that the Klan no longer operates in the area.

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a white supremacist hate group in the United States that was originally founded in 1865 by former Confederate soldiers after the Civil War. It started as a secret society but quickly became a violent organization using terror and intimidation to oppose the rights of African Americans and other minority groups. The Klan has had three major periods of activity: the first during Reconstruction in the late 1800s, the second in the early 1900s when it expanded its targets to include immigrants, Jews, and Catholics, and the third from the mid-1900s to today, opposing the Civil Rights Movement. Members are known for wearing white robes and hoods to hide their identities and frighten others. Throughout its history, the KKK has been responsible for numerous acts of violence, including lynchings, bombings, and arson, all aimed at maintaining white supremacy and racial segregation.

Their plan is to transform the sawmill into a juke joint offering alcohol and gambling to make money from the Black community in the area. They recruit their young cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), an aspiring musician and gifted guitarist who joins them despite opposition from his pastor father, who believes the music holds supernatural powers that attract evil forces.

A juke joint is an informal establishment historically operated by African Americans in the southeastern United States, featuring music, dancing, gambling, and drinking. These venues emerged primarily after emancipation as social spaces for Black workers who were excluded from white establishments due to segregation laws.

To prepare for the opening night, the twins go separate ways. Stack drives to Clarksdale with Sammie to recruit pianist Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), where he unexpectedly runs into his estranged ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld). Meanwhile, Sammie becomes captivated by a beautiful married woman Pearline (Jayme Lawson). Recognizing her talent as a singer, he invites her to perform at the juke joint that evening.

Smoke takes the truck into town, stopping at the grocery store to buy food and supplies from Bo Chow (Yao) and commissioning Bo’s wife Grace (Li Jun Li) to create a sign and menu for the juke joint.

Later, Smoke visits his child’s grave near his old house, where his estranged wife Hoodoo practitioner Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) now lives alone. He asks her to help with cooking at the juke joint. When Smoke offers Annie some cash, she refuses, knowing it’s money Smoke didn’t earn legally. She tells him he’s still alive only because she prays for him and because of the magical charm she gave him for protection.

Hoodoo is an African American spiritual tradition and folk magic practice that blends African religious beliefs with Christianity and other influences. Originating among enslaved Africans in the United States, Hoodoo incorporates herbal healing, ancestor veneration, spirit communication, and the use of charms and plat roots for protection, healing, and influencing outcomes in life. It is often called “rootwork” or “conjure,” involving spells, mojo bags, and rituals designed to harness personal power and connect with spirits. Unlike organized religion, Hoodoo lacks formal theology, rigid doctrines, or worship rituals, and practitioners can follow any faith while practicing Hoodoo. It developed as a way to preserve African spiritual practices under the constraints of slavery and segregation, blending with Christian elements such as the use of Psalms in rituals. Hoodoo is deeply tied to African American cultural identity, emphasizing practical magic, ancestral connections, and survival through spiritual means rather than religious worship.

Meanwhile, an Irish immigrant named Remmick (Jack O’Connell) flees to a slab hut outside of town, desperately knocking on the door for help. When Joan (Lola Kirke) and Bert (Peter Dreimanis) answer, Remmick offers them gold in exchange for shelter, claiming people are trying to hurt him. Seeing the gold, Joan and Bert’s demeanor immediately changes, and they eagerly invite him inside.

Moments later, a group of Native American men arrives at the same hut. When Joan opens the door, they ask if she’s seen a stranger passing through, warning her that the man is dangerous and not who he claims to be. Joan firmly denies seeing anyone. After the men leave, she returns to the bedroom only to discover that Remmick is a vampire and Bert has already been turned.

The juke joint’s grand opening is spectacular, drawing crowds for food, drinks, gambling, and live music. However, profits aren’t growing as fast as Smoke hoped since many guests are plantation workers and sharecroppers who can’t pay upfront and run tabs until payday.

As Sammie begins playing, his extraordinary talent makes the music transcendent, unknowingly summoning spirits from past and future to join the celebration. Remmick is drawn to Sammie’s music, becoming fixated on the young musician, convinced he possesses a power Remmick desperately needs.

Throughout history and across cultures, legends and myths have warned that music can draw evil or demons, often imbuing certain musical forms or instruments with supernatural danger. In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church considered this interval so dissonant and unsettling that it was banned, earning it the nickname “the Devil in Music.” This belief connected certain sounds with the power to summon dark forces or tempt listeners toward sin.

Remmick arrives with Joan and Bert, posing as traveling musicians who happened upon the place and want to come inside, offering to pay. The twins grow suspicious, especially Smoke, who worries that white visitors might cause trouble that could get their joint permanently closed. They decide to turn Remmick away, asking him to leave.

After Remmick’s group departs, Mary learns about the juke joint’s financial struggles. She suggests pursuing Remmick to see if he’s as wealthy as he appears, thinking he might solve their money problems.

However, once Mary realizes Remmick isn’t an ordinary man, she becomes terrified. As she turns to flee back toward the juke joint, Remmick attacks her, transforming her into another vampire.

Written and directed by acclaimed American filmmaker Ryan Coogler, SINNERS is an extraordinary supernatural tour de force that masterfully interweaves elements of period drama with vampire mythology, dark comedy, and rich blues traditions. The result is a hauntingly distinctive cinematic experience that stands as one of the most compelling and thought-provoking entries in the horror genre in recent memory.

I like the deliberate slow-burn narrative that unfolds with unsettling precision, gradually building tension before delivering viscerally charged, blood-soaked confrontations in the final act.

I find myself a bit disappointed that Coogler sticks to conventional vampire mythology (the creatures remaining bound by traditional constraints such as requiring verbal invitation to enter premises, hatred of garlic, and vulnerability to wooden stakes and sunlight) rather than reimagining these supernatural elements.

In vampire mythology, several core rules consistently appear across cultures and stories. Vampires are immortal beings who require human blood to survive, gaining superhuman strength, speed, and senses in the process. They are vulnerable to sunlight, which can weaken or destroy them, and they cannot enter a private home without being invited by the occupant. Vampirism is typically transmitted through a bite or blood exchange, and destroying a vampire often requires staking their heart, decapitation, burning, or exposure to sunlight.

Spoilers — OFF ▼

SINNERS was theatrically released in the United States on 18 April 2025, by Warner Bros. Pictures.

How Ludwig Göransson Fueled the Electrifying ‘Sinners’ Soundtrack With the 1932 Dobro Cyclops
At first, Ludwig Göransson thought he would be on the New Orleans set once a week, but he quickly realized how much music the film contained and how embedded it was in the story. There were 29 individual music moments that we had to account for, and we didn’t want it to feel like a musical. We wanted it to feel as lived-in. Just as organic and natural, and a part of everyday life. The music was a mighty task, so Ludwig Göransson studied the history of the blues, even taking a trip to Memphis to do a research tour with his father, a blues guitar player. Ludwig Göransson says the score is his most personal to date, and a reflection of his own musical journey.

They found the music of ‘Sinners’ together — just as they have from the beginning
Even though Ludwig Göransson is a white Swede with Samson locks and Ryan Coogler hails from Oakland and has cornrows, they talk with the easy fraternity of two guys who bonded over a mutual love of hip-hop at a pool table in USC’s student housing. Göransson has scored every Coogler picture since his 2009 student film “Locks,” and he never merely varnishes them with music in postproduction — he is truly Coogler’s co-author. He also is a partner in Coogler’s new production company, Proximity Media. And despite his background — growing up in Linköping, Sweden, in the 1980s — Göransson was practically baptized in American blues music. His father worshipped guitarists from the Delta and even wanted to name his son after the Mississippian Albert King but was outvoted by his wife, who named him after Beethoven. The story was first sparked by Ryan Coogler’s uncle James, a blues-loving man from Mississippi. After he made “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Coogler was washing dishes one night and listening to “Wang Dang Doodle,” a 1960 blues song about a crazy all-night party with a colorful cast of characters, and lightning struck. Fueled by a lifetime love of horror, the filmmaker developed a plot that resurrected the life force of the early blues scene and merged it with the intriguing possibilities inherent in a vampire’s eternal lifespan.

‘Sinners’ mixes blues, vampires and the Mississippi Delta into Ryan Coogler’s 1st original film
“Fruitvale Station” was set in his hometown of Oakland, California, and explored the last day of Oscar Grant. “Creed” was dreamed up for his father, who loved “Rocky” unabashedly. And “Black Panther” let him grapple with the idea of what it means to be African. In just four features, he’d established himself as one of the top filmmakers working today. “Jurassic Park” is probably not a film that anyone would categorize first as horror, Coogler knows, but there were terrifying moments that imprinted on his consciousness. Films like “Get Out” and “The Shining” did the same. He wanted to give audiences that feeling too and threw everything he loved into “Sinners.” The setting of the film was also inspired by his family’s ties to a Mississippi of the past. One was his maternal grandfather who originated from Merrill, Mississippi, and moved to Oakland, where the family remains. The other was the man who introduced him to blues music, his Uncle James, who died while Coogler was making “Creed.”