Ryan Coogler is the film-maker and hit-maker who started in social realism with his debut Fruitvale Station, became the Wakandan emperor of super heroism with Black Panther and put some punch back into the Rocky franchise with Creed. Now he dials up the machismo and the craziness with this gonzo horror-thriller mashup, a spectacular if more-than-faintly hubristic movie appropriately named Sinners – though there are one or two saints dotted around – set in the prewar deep south.
It’s a freaky tale of supernatural evil and the blues that indirectly takes its inspiration from the legend of Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at a remote crossroads in return for fame and fortune. And it’s also, in its forthright way, a riff on the idea of blues as a kind of music that is avidly consumed by its producers’ enemies. As Delroy Lindo’s character says: “White folks like the blues just fine; just not the people who make it.”
R&B singer-songwriter Miles Caton makes his acting debut as Sammie, a preternaturally gifted teen blues guitarist and singer who is also, in the immortal words sung by Dusty Springfield, the son of a preacher man. Sammie is the cousin to two twin scoundrels and sharp-dressing dandies, Elijah and Elias Smoke, both played with some presence by Michael B Jordan. These two have been mixed up in gang warfare in Chicago where they were apparently been working for Al Capone and are now returned to their home turf with a ton of money which they hope to invest in their own juke joint, with young Sammie bringing in the crowds with his amazing music. But then one of the twins’ ex-lovers shows up – Mary, played by Hailee Steinfeld – who is admitted to the joint on sufferance, along with a sinister country singer called Remmick, gurningly played by Jack O’Connell, with a fondness for Irish tunes. And as night falls, the forces of darkness and the undead close in and that juke joint finds itself under siege until the sun comes back up.
In some ways, this is a black version of Robert Rodriguez’s 90s head-trip From Dusk Till Dawn, scripted by Quentin Tarantino, with George Clooney and Tarantino as the two brothers holed up in a grisly saloon down Mexico way, under threat from satanic bandits. Tarantino and Rodriguez responded to the premise with irony and anarchy, but that isn’t exactly how Coogler plays this film tonally. For the first half, it is pretty much a realistic period adventure in which the twins’ outlaw anti-heroism functions in a believable world. They are the bad guys, and yet we can’t help but notice the good in them, or least the understandable survival instinct – and then the real demons show up, which makes these real-world issues irrelevant.
For many, the movie could as well do without the supernatural element, and I admit I’m one of them; I’d prefer to see a real story with real jeopardy work itself out. But there is energy and comic-book brashness – and a notable real-world cameo in the post-credits sting.
• Sinners is out on 17 April in Australia, and 18 April in the UK and US.
