This article contains spoilers for the movie Sinners.
Sinners, a movie directed by acclaimed director Ryan Coogler, debuted in theaters on April 17. With actors like Michael B Jordan and Hailey Steingfield, alongside Coogler, who directed hit movies such as Black Panther and Creed, critics were excited. The film was marketed as a thriller/horror movie, but little of the plot and characters were revealed before its release.
I was originally uninterested in the movie due to my distaste for horror movies, but I was encouraged by the movie’s high ratings and reviews, and what I had heard was a beautiful blending of genres, to give the film a chance. So with popcorn and a friend in hand, I took my seat in a crowded movie theater and witnessed a masterpiece.
The movie opens with a wounded, young preacher’s son named Sammy busting into his father’s courthouse with a broken guitar in hand. Viewers get glimpses of his horrifying night before the movie goes back in time to reveal the sequence of events that led to Sammy’s bloody entrance.
Twins Stack and Smoke, both played by Jordan, are returning to the plantation they were raised on, armed with cash. The two buy a run-down mill that they plan to make a juke joint. They recruit their cousin, Sammy, to perform at the grand opening.
Meanwhile, separate from the main plot, we see a couple greet a weary traveler. The camera pans past the open door to a KKK mask sitting on their bed. The traveler is welcomed inside, where he eventually shifts into a vampire and brutally turns the two into vampires. Later, this same couple and traveler try to enter the juke joint, where the rest of the plot picks up.
Although thrilling, the edge-of-your-seat plot is not what makes this movie so spectacular. It’s the symbolism intertwined in the complex characters and their choices, which speaks to a louder theme of racism in Jim Crow America, that sets this movie apart. It’s more than a vampire horror movie, and there are a few easy-to-miss symbolic elements and their broader meanings as they relate to the theme of Black people’s different reactions to the oppression they faced in the Jim Crow South.
- money
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Money is a continuous theme in the movie. Money is what gave the twins power both within and outside of the plantation. The twins both wanted that power, but differed on why.
Stack wanted power within the plantation, while Smoke wanted power outside the world against the white oppressors. You can see this difference play out in the scene where the twins are arguing about whether they will accept the money that the sharecroppers on the plantation were using. Smoke doesn’t consider the cash “real,” which Stack disagrees with. Smoke’s denial of the money shows his larger mentality of conforming to White people’s definition of power in Jim Crow Mississippi.
A similar conclusion can be drawn from Smoke’s conversation with his wife, Annie. Smoke judges Annie for accepting the money because it has no “power.” Annie responds by saying it has power here, and she “isn’t leaving.” Again, we can see Smoke finding value in having power in white society, and the other characters dismissing this power.
So, Smoke’s view on money reveals a larger comment on Black people in Jim Crow America, and their different responses to racism: Smoke’s acceptance, and Annie and Stack’s disagreement.
- Sammy’s guitar
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We see Sammy’s guitar throughout the movie. At the beginning, when it is handed to him by his father, and at the end, when it’s broken, still clutched in his hands.
The way Sammy treats this guitar reveals his inner feelings about his life. The guitar and the music Sammy plays with it are treasures. They give him some sort of power in his life. His cousins and community recognize him as a talented musician. His music, the way it makes him feel, gives him a sense of both power and purpose.
That’s why, when both Smoke and his father try to get him to drop the broken guitar at the end of the movie, he is reluctant to do so. When Smoke asks him why he’s still holding on to it, Sammy remarks that Stack said it used to belong to a famous person. Smoke tells him that Stack lied.
This lack of acceptance from Sammy, even after the vampire attack of the previous night and Smoke’s correction, reveals yet another reaction some people of color may have had to the racism they experienced in Jim Crow America. They may have kept holding on to some guitar, some sort of hope that others like Smoke and the preacher had already let go of.
- vampires
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The vampires themselves symbolize the racist southerners of the time and their goal to assimilate the Black community into the specific roles they had for them. They tried to persuade those still inside the juke joint to leave with a song — something that represents community, equality, and hope.
Hailee Steinfeld’s character, Mary, was the first to be turned. The importance of the one White passing character who was a part of the “family” being turned, and thus turning her ex, Stack, cannot be overlooked. Even though she was accepted into the plantation’s family, she was easily manipulated by the White people’s song and money.
Stack is seen trying to hide his relationship with Mary, knowing their interracial relationship would not go over well with the people he was trying to win business from. And the two’s love and the power dynamic of a White woman and a Black man eventually led to their demise when Mary tricked Stack into her bed to bite and turned him.
- music
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The soul music played by Sammy and enjoyed by his community connects people. It belonged entirely to them; it was their souls. But it also attracted the vampires or the White people. They tried to use these people’s voices, which they put into music, against them.
Remmik, the original vampire in the movie, said that he wanted Sammy and tried to manipulate the twins to hand him over so that he could use his talent, appropriate it, and rid the community of the hope his music brings, assimilation.
Sinners was a hard-hitting movie with symbolism and heavy themes intertwined in a horror plot. It’s easy to leave the theater and not see the hidden message of the film. The expertly crafted movie combined thematic elements, good characters, laughable moments, and impactful themes to create the year’s best movie. It earned its 98% rotten tomato score.