When I realized I needed to see Sinners now rather than wait for it to come out on streaming, I planned to review it for the blog and I wrote an introduction the day before I saw it.
I didn’t get very far into the movie before I realized I would have to change my plans. Sinners isn’t just a vampire movie or a horror movie or even a historical movie. It’s a movie that deals with many ideas, including some religious and spiritual concepts. I want to explore those in detail rather than writing yet another generic movie review.
Before I do that, though, here’s a very short review: yes, Sinners is every bit as good as the buzz says it is. It’s not my idea of a perfect vampire movie (I like my vampire movies with the three C’s: capes, coffins, and castles). But it’s just an excellent movie, period. It mixes multiple genres and it handles all of them brilliantly. It’s a good, original story told very well.
If you think you might like it, you will. Go see it – vote with your dollars and tell Hollywood to make more movies like this and not just more CGI-driven franchise movies.
But I need to temper my enthusiasm enough to be honest: if you don’t like horror and you can’t stand blood, you’ll have to skip this one.
This post contains some rather important spoilers. If you haven’t seen Sinners yet and you intend to, you may want to stop here and come back after you see it.
The complexity of Christianity in the world of Sinners
Director Ryan Coogler called Sinners his “most personal film yet.” It’s a story of Black people in the Deep South in the 1930s. As an old white guy, it’s not my place to speculate about what this movie means for their story, nor is it my place to judge the role of Christianity within it.
That said, it’s a historical fact that when people were kidnapped from Africa and brought to America in chains, their ancestral religion was one of the many things that was taken from them. Christianity was forced on them in its place. And not the Christianity that proclaims good news to the poor and freedom for the oppressed, but the Christianity that commands slaves to obey their masters.
It’s also a historical fact that Christianity in general and the Black church in particular have been sources of inspiration and community for decades – especially during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s – and for some they remain so to this day.
Some African religion and spirituality survived in culture, and in the Afro-Diasporic religions that may or may not be part of the Big Tent of Paganism. In an interview on Religion Dispatches, Dr. Yvonne Chireau – who was the Hoodoo consultant on Sinners – said:
There’s a lot of Christianity in Vodou, in Hoodoo. Hollywood really struggles with the complexity of that. And what we’re seeing in Sinners isn’t removed from what the characters’ enslaved ancestors might have done, but it’s also not removed from Christianity.
How to deal with that complexity is a question I cannot answer for other individuals, much less for communities of which I am not a part.
A polytheist’s hope for inspiration
As a polytheist and as someone who values religious diversity, I will say I wish more was being done to protect and preserve the remaining indigenous religions of Africa, which have been under assault from Christianity and from Islam for centuries. If Sinners inspires some folks of African descent to explore these beliefs and practices, that would be a very good thing.
Unfortunately, any time I encourage people to explore the religions of their ancestors, I must also point out that my own Druidry, witchcraft, and Paganism are open to all. That shouldn’t need to be said, but there are some Pagan groups who restrict admission to those with the “right” skin color. I have nothing to do with them and I hope you won’t either. As we say in our Denton CUUPS rituals “we welcome all who come in love and friendship.”
While many people do find meaning in the beliefs and practices of their pre-Christian ancestors, the Gods call who they call and steering people to certain religions and away from others is disrespectful to both humans and deities.
Vampires aren’t the only soul suckers
Sinners mostly sticks to traditional vampire lore. Vampires cannot enter a house unless they’re invited. They’re repelled by silver and garlic and they can be killed by sunlight or a stake through the heart. But these vampires are not impacted by Christian imagery and prayers.
Last year I wrote Vampires, Crosses, and the Importance of Good Metaphysics where I explored how the role of Christianity in vampire fiction has changed over the years, largely due to the changing religious views of the people who write these stories. It’s no surprise that a writer would not place ultimate power in a religion that was used to justify enslaving his ancestors.
For me, though, the strongest and most personal indictment of Christianity – or rather, a certain kind of Christianity, especially the kind I grew up in – came in the post-vampire attack scene that was split between the opening and the ending of the movie. Sammie – injured and traumatized – goes to church on Sunday morning. His preacher father embraces him, but keeps exhorting him to “drop the guitar.”
Drop your dreams. Abandon your calling. Do what I tell you. Accept the false security of a meager existence.
My favorite scene was what followed. Sammie drives away, still holding onto the neck of the broken guitar, still holding onto his dreams, walking away from all he had ever known in the hope that something better was down the road – and with the determination to make it so.
The idea that the blues – and its direct descendant, rock & roll – are “the devil’s music” is a lie told by those who are frightened by the freedom that good music inspires and celebrates.
What do you do when you can’t win?
Good religion focuses on virtues, not on rules. What is good, and how can you best embody what is good in your life – especially in difficult times?
Sinners explores the question “what do you do when you can’t win?”
What do you do when you aren’t allowed to win?
Smoke and Stack (both played brilliantly by Michael B. Jordan – I generally don’t like one actor playing two near-identical characters, but this works well) come back to Mississippi to build good lives for themselves, to give their community a place it needs – and to make money. The Klan and its allies were never going to allow that to happen. American history of the early 20th century is full of these stories, with Tulsa in 1921 being one – but only one – of the worst.
What do you do when you can’t win?
Smoke ripped off Annie’s mojo bag that had protected him in the trenches of World War I and in the mob wars of Chicago and started shooting the Klansmen who had come to kill him and his friends. I think he got them all, but they got him as well. Faced with impossible odds, he went down fighting… and then joined his partner and their child in the afterlife.
Stack and Mary did what Annie would not do. They made a deal with the devil and lived on as vampires (and also because Smoke couldn’t bring himself to kill his brother). Their appearance and their behavior at the club in Chicago in 1992 showed that they were not entirely monsters, but they weren’t entirely human either. Faced with impossible odds, they did what they had to do to survive.
I’ve already talked about Sammie. He fought to survive the vampire attack, but he didn’t have to make a life-or-death decision in the moment like Smoke and Stack did. He had to think about it… and then he had to work to make his choice a reality, day after day, week after week, year after year.
“Old” Sammie is played by legendary blues guitarist Buddy Guy, who like Sammie grew up picking cotton as the child of sharecroppers. He’s still touring today at the age of 88.
Smoke and Annie, Stack and Mary, Sammie – who made the right decision?
They all did. They all did what was right and heroic, as they understood it.
If the stories of our Pagan ancestors teach us anything, it’s that being heroic isn’t about winning every battle. It’s about living a good and virtuous life – as you understand it, not as you’re told you’re supposed to do – even when you can’t win.
I think that’s why Sinners resonated with me so strongly.
Magic and the truth
There is so much more to this movie.
I’m not a Hoodoo practitioner, but I recognize real magic when I see it. Dr. Yvonne Chireau was worth whatever Ryan Coogler paid her for her expertise. I love that while Annie’s rootworking experience meant that she was familiar with vampires, she also admitted she had never actually encountered one and wasn’t sure exactly what they should do.
The scene in the juke joint where the music was so good it conjured the spirits of the past and the spirits of the future was amazing (I’ve heard it’s even better in IMAX). Dr. Chireau said “Sinners shows us the juke as sacred space.” There’s a probably a whole blog post in that, although I don’t think I’m the person to write it.
And I would be disingenuous if I didn’t point out that Sinners tells the kind of story that some of our political leaders are trying to silence, because it makes them “feel uncomfortable.” Its box office success says we’re capable of handling the truth.
Sinners is many stories, told on many levels, and they’re all true. That’s why it’s a great movie.
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