This article contains spoilers for “Sinners.”
Part of what’s made vampires such impactful movie monsters for the better part of the past century is seeing how these bloodsuckers have evolved in tandem with the medium they’ve thrived in. Their cinematic immortality serves as preserved legends for the next wave of filmmakers to not only learn from, but expand upon. You can glean so much from the creative gap between Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Vampyr” and Terence Fisher’s “Horror of Dracula,” as much as you can the stretch between Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark” and Ana Lily Amirpour’s “A Girl Walk Home Alone at Night.” Even “Nosferatu” most recently had a visual conversation about its shared legacy between F.W. Murnau and Robert Eggers.
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It’s safe to say that any conversation about the most prolific vampire movies of the 2020s would be nigh impossible without the inclusion of Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners.” /Film’s Jeremy Mathai had nothing but the utmost praise for Coogler’s ambitious horror epic in his review and I couldn’t agree more. “Sinners” is such a visually and sonically stirring piece of entertainment with a whole lot of bite. It’s clear that Coogler wanted to go for more than a traditional vampire movie, as the film is a western, horror movie, blues musical, and creature feature all rolled into one.
Coogler’s work, aside from his debut feature “Fruitvale Station,” has primarily existed in the realm of adaptation. But what makes him an interesting filmmaker, however, is how he’s able to present familiar characters, settings, and themes in a package that feels as if he’s telling these stories for the very first time. “Creed” and “Black Panther” are so singular in their existence. “Sinners” feels especially noteworthy because there are so many influences infused with its DNA, yet comes out on the other side as a wholly original piece of filmmaking that the next generation will use as inspiration.
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You can see glimpses of everything from Robert Rodriguez (“From Dusk Till Dawn”) to Stephen King (“Salem’s Lot”) and Ernest R. Dickerson (“Demon Knight”), but there’s one spectacular sequence in which Coogler pays homage to the great John Carpenter.
Sinners takes a page out of Carpenter’s The Thing
“Sinners” is very effective at maintaining tension because it spends the first third letting us simmer with these characters in the world they inhabit. It makes it that much harder to stomach when Jack O’Connell’s red-eyed Remmick comes a-knocking and makes trouble for everyone. The safe haven of Club Juke gets a rude awakening as various partygoers start getting transformed into the dancing vampire collective outside. Naturally, the few who have shacked up inside begin to get suspicious of whether the person next to them has been turned or not. Taking a page out of John Carpenter’s horror epic “The Thing,” club owner Smoke (Michael B. Jordan) suggests a test to weed out anyone who might be lying.
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Although Coogler’s vampires are wholly original creations, he utilizes their time-honored vulnerabilities like sunlight and wooden stakes to prey upon audience expectations. In “Sinners,” Smoke passes around a jar of pickled garlic cloves to rule out any immortal imposters hiding among them. Li Jun Li’s Grace naturally raises some eyebrows when she protests having to eat one. When she finally eats it, we’re able to relax for a moment, but I remember my heart dropping when Delroy Lindo’s Delta Slim is shown to have an adverse reaction to it.
I had to prepare myself to potentially see one of the film’s best characters, a blues musician who can play a mean harmonica, bite the dust. But thankfully, tensions are momentarily relieved when it’s revealed that his response was not on account of acute vampirism, but because the garlic makes for a potent mix with all of the Irish beer the SmokeStack pair had been giving to him all night. It makes for a great laugh, but as it goes though, the relief doesn’t last.
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In “The Thing,” it’s Kurt Russell’s MacReady who lines up the remaining Arctic survivors to draw blood and see if the heated wire has a reaction. There’s a reason why it’s one of the most suspenseful scenes in any horror film, as the tension of losing a character we’ve grown to like can be unbearable. The garlic test is a great example of paying homage without dipping into outright emulation. It’s not at all surprising that Coogler is a fan of Carpenter considering he has a giant poster of “The Thing” in his office (via Proximity Media).
There’s a jaw-droppingly beautiful sequence around the midway point where the vocal talent of prodigious blues player Sammie (Miles Caton) opens a metaphorically anachronistic musical rift through time. It’s the best way to view “Sinners” as a whole: a series of influences across genres, filmmakers, and tropes throughout various mediums that embolden a whole new vision in the process. For one moment, Coogler and Carpenter sing to one another.
