Reviews
[REVIEW] ‘Sinners’: Ryan Coogler’s First Horror Movie Is For The Culture
Sinners is a bloody, sexy, devilish good time. It is also a love letter to Black filmgoers as it reminds us the price of freedom never came cheap for those who came before us. However, a few seconds of freedom is a lot for people who are used to turning crumbs into a feast. Why should we assimilate when we can keep doing us, cousin? After all, the drinks are cold, the catfish is hot, and the music is better on the inside.
Ryan Coogler is a filmmaker hellbent on giving Black folks a reason to show up and show out in theaters near you. While many of us discovered him with Black Panther, he had already sent warning shots to the industry with Fruitvale Station and Creed. Films that established no matter what the subject matter is, his art is made with Black people in mind. This is a welcome departure from the racial trauma porn that many of us are constantly subjected to in the media. Coogler’s work is more interested in capturing Black joy while acknowledging the entirety of the Black experience. He does not shy away from the sentimental. Nor does he sugarcoat that this country runs on racism rather than Dunkin’ Donuts. He is just aware that we deserve more in the year 2025 of our Lord Jordan Peele. This is why Blerds have been eagerly awaiting his first horror film, Sinners.
Michael B. Jordan Shines as Twin Brothers in Sinners
Sinners takes place in 1932 on the day twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return to their hometown in the Delta. The two have survived WWI, managed to escape with their lives working for infamous Chicago mobsters, and are ready for a new venture. With stolen liquor and wads of cash, they set out to open a jukejoint for Black folks. They enlist their younger cousin, and some old friends, and begin to reignite things with their former flames as they think they are starting a new chapter.
However, their grand opening is interrupted when a band of vampires realizes they have someone they want. The leader of the undead, Remmick (Jack O’Connell), is delightfully creepy and will not take no for an answer. What ensues is a fun bloodbath by a filmmaker who refuses to treat his movies as if they should not all be Oscar contenders.
Again, Coogler makes movies for Black folks. So, there is a lot more Black joy in this movie than I would have expected. There is barely any vampire activity in the first half of Sinners. However, whenever I almost felt salty about that, I remembered lesser movies that took their time. Those same titles are the ones people claim are pure cinema, so those cinephiles should let Coogler cook.
He gives us a reverse From Dusk Till Dawn situation where the vampires want inside the establishment to feed on our beloved characters. This also allows Sinners to sustain tension as we wait to see who will be foolish enough to eventually invite them in and start the battle.
While Sinners never completely veers into Vampires Vs. the Bronx territory, it is clear that Remmick is offering a different brand of gentrification. He is trying to sell them the more subtle flavor that is assimilation. He offers friendship, community, and eternal life. However, it comes with a hefty price: their souls and identities.
The very freedom they have strived for with this business endeavor and their own community that welcomed them back with open arms. He wants them to forsake their individualism and become part of his undead hive.
Miles Caton Steals the Show as Sammie in Sinners
Most thirsty people were sold by the idea of getting two Michael B. Jordans for the price of one. However, the movie belongs to Miles Caton, who plays Sammie, the younger cousin of the twins. Sammie’s dad is a preacher, but Sammie wants to be a musician. Spending this fateful day with his cousins, whom he idolizes, as they take him under his wing, is clearly the best day of his life. At least until night falls and people start dying. Caton infuses the character with so much little brother energy that it is hard not to feel protective of him.
As the bodies begin piling up, the anxiety for his well-being skyrockets. As a lover of Black vampire cinema, I could not help but wonder if his scenes in the church were a little bit of a nod to Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess.
Rounding out the main cast is Wunmi Mosaku as Annie. Mosaku fans will recognize her as another woman who stays 10 steps ahead of everyone else. She clocks the weirdos outside as not human and catches everyone else up. She is also tasked with laying down the rules, which is a vital role in every vampire tale. Annie and Smoke are hesitantly rekindling their relationship after suffering a traumatic blow years ago. Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) is a woman who has a history with Stack.
Their fling meant more to them than he would like to let on, and her mother practically raised the twins. Because of her skin tone, she can pass as a white woman but knows where her real community is. Like Annie, she is a baddie in love with one of the troublesome twins. Unlike Annie, she makes a grave mistake.
We also get the added treat of Delroy Lindo as Delta Slim. A drunk musician who has some of the funniest lines once all hell breaks loose. However, one of the things that I love about Sinners is that it acknowledges Black folks were not the only ones keeping non-white communities afloat. A Choctaw tribe tries to warn a racist she is in danger. Grace Chow (Li Jun Li) and Bo Chow (Yao) are another hot couple in this dancery. They run a few businesses in the Black part of town, and the twins know they are the first people to call when plotting their event.
They are entrenched in this community and a Jack and Jill of many trades. They can find catfish for 100 people, make signs, and patch up thieves who have been shot. This is awesome, but it sadly leads to them getting front-row seats to the ensuing carnage.
Ludwig Göransson’s Music Elevates Sinners’ Vampire Tale
Coogler is not just reteaming with Jordan for Sinners, but he also tagged composer Ludwig Göransson for this gory tale. Göransson has worked on all of Coogler’s films, but this is the first one that puts music at the center. As someone who hates musicals and is a recovering theatre kid, I got nervous the first few times musical moments scratched at the window of my vampire movie. However, music is crucial to the plot, and this thread pays off for people who know a movie does not end until the credits are over.
The use of music also helps the film further set itself apart from other vampire movies it will be compared to for eternity. The vampire’s songs are so different from what Sammie and the other acts have brought this night that it’s offputting. It instantly alerts our main characters that they are not like us.
I jokingly refer to Remmick and his squad as Mumford & Sons when explaining my journey to accepting the music was here to stay. However, he and his bloody band of vampires are disturbing no matter how hard they dance or sing. This is partly because Coogler also brought back Director of Photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who he partnered with for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. So, this movie looks gorgeous, and Arkapaw made history by being the first woman cinematographer to shoot a feature on large format IMAX film.
I did not realize what a difference this would make until I was in the theater. So many shots of Sinners belong in the MoMA.
Is Sinners a Cultural Milestone for Black Cinema?
I know that Sinners runtime is a commitment. I also know most of us were going for the Coogler Effect and the hot cast. However, the film is another pop culture shift on this filmmaker’s resume. In the way that Black Panther became a historical moment, Sinners is achieving the same. We can argue all day about if it could have been hornier, what scenes could be trimmed, and so forth.
However, none of the nitpicky things undercuts the social significance of what this film does. It transcends its subgenre as it becomes one of the best vampire movies of my generation. My only regret is that I do not live in one of the places showing the film the way the director intended it to be seen.
Sinners is a bloody, sexy, devilish good time. It is also a love letter to Black filmgoers as it reminds us the price of freedom never came cheap for those who came before us. However, a few seconds of freedom is a lot for people who are used to turning crumbs into a feast. Why should we assimilate when we can keep doing us, cousin?
After all, the drinks are cold, the catfish is hot, and the music is better on the inside.
Of all the horror movies to be described as a runaway train, Rob Savage’s Other Mommy is the first in recent memory to have that quality as a negative. A more focused piece of over-the-top supernatural horror would capitalize on starting at a high speed and just gunning it. It would get increasingly faster, more horrific with its effects and reveals, more stunning and spectacle-filled. But Other Mommy never utilizes the momentum it starts with. It stays at the same steady, uncomfortable pace. And it gets old, very fast.
Other Mommy Is Missing a First Act
The movie begins in what should have been the second act; it never does stop haunting the narrative that Other Mommy feels like it’s missing 30 minutes of setup and 10 minutes of breathing room that would actually get you to care about what’s happening. Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) is a young girl already well acquainted with a creature known as Other Mommy. A supernatural being that can change shape and size to her liking, becoming anyone she wants and then some. The entity only desires one thing: for Bela to let it into her heart and give it a new body.
Bela’s parents, Ursula (played by Jessica Chastain, in a dual role as the Other Mommy) and Russell (Jay Duplass), become aware of the space-bending creature in the film’s very first scenes. Soon, they’re on the run from the creature that’s trying to tear the already strained family apart. But the overwrought family drama of an unfaithful mother and a scatterbrained father forced to hide their struggling marriage from their kid is smothered. Much like Chastain’s performance, it’s drowned out by a barrage of aggressive and unimpressive digital effects trying to milk every single moment for a fright, desperate to keep audiences’ attention.
A Clumsy Digital Effects Showcase That Smothers the Story to Death
Other Mommy is primarily concerned with showing off its titular monster and her reality-bending powers, jumping from one “scare filled”, dreamlike sequence to the next; heavy, heavy quotes on scare filled. You become inured to every trick the film has as it shows you all the most unimaginative uses of a shapeshifting, size changing monster possible. There is no clever framing or use of shadow to obscure it, no restraint at all really. The directing is frenetic and clumsy, but it makes sure to make the monster as clear as possible. It’s all out in the open, plain to see, and bizarrely mundane for a depiction of a demonic interloper.
Every jumpscare-a-minute scene moves too fast and is too overlit to ever scare. The bright and inappropriate atmosphere fails the already rough looking digital effects. What it amounts to is a choppily edited and disjointed assortment of scenes, with weak imitations of Trevor Henderson style abominations center stage. Tall and small and melty variations of a CGI Chastain, none of them work to evoke tension or fear or any emotion other than the occasional eyebrow raise for how goofy some of them look.
There are a few moments where Chastain teases at playing the monster effectively without face and body morphing effects, sporting a genuinely disturbing countenance and creepy voice. But as soon as these fragments of interest come, they’re washed away by warping her into a lanky, slinking monster of ridiculous proportions. What we get out of the dual role is a boring creature for the feature, and a dry, one-dimensional protagonist, both squandering the phenomenal actor Chastain is.
Other Mommy is Full of Dull Performances and Squandered Potential
Duplass offers little with his supporting role, providing flat dialogue and flatter comic relief as a middling SNL sketch’s idea of a clownish father. It’s worth noting Clark actually provides the most interesting performance among the entire cast, a feat impressive from such a young child actor. But even her endearing and heart-breaking time as Bela is too little and too shadowed by the faulty composition of the film it’s trapped in.
The trailer for Other Mommy may have caught audiences off guard at the cinema in the past few months. But ultimately, that trailer showed the movie’s entire hand. Other Mommy is a pasty, crooked collage of elements from the supernatural horror movies producer James Wan made the backbone of the genre a decade ago. That doesn’t make it a throwback; just a rehash of cliches, with no structure and no sense of cohesion. It never amounts to anything more interesting than what the marketing material showed, which is a tragic end for a film, if there ever was one.
Luz: The Flower of Evil is a movie simultaneously charged with and mired in ambition. It’s genuinely comical how overly ambitious of a first-time film it is for writer-director Juan Diego Escobar Alzate: a microbudget, shot on location in the mountains of Colombia, character driven psychological horror film meant to explore the very nature of good and evil while also tackling cults and misogyny.
So, it’s shocking how much of it works. Not all of it works, not at all, but it is cohesive enough to serve as a surprising experience with the colorful aesthetic it employs and incredibly dark places it goes to.
What Is Luz: Flower of Evil About?
After the death of their mother Luz, three sisters in a rural cult community find their faith waning. The three are the centerpiece of an elaborate theology crafted by their cult leader father, a man who is becoming more difficult to deal with by the day. So, when he brings a mute boy into town, chaining him up and claiming he’s the people’s messiah, an already tense situation devolves into outright madness. What ensues is the slow dissolution of the cult, and the torturous end of an already fractured family.
Let this usual synopsis section also serve as a content warning: the film does depict sexual violence very early on, about 25 minutes into the film. It’s not Irreversible levels of horrifically long, but it’s also not particularly brief and still graphic content by its nature. It can be difficult to stomach, so I’m mentioning it now for those who would rather avoid that sort of thing.
A Ponderous Arthouse Folk Horror About Good and Evil
The film has shocking moments, but it’s not very interested in shock value. This is first and foremost a slow burn, a piece of arthouse folk horror that is more about bleeding out than it is about a violent demise. The most obvious comparisons are to The VVitch and Midsommar, but even that feels like an inappropriate mix, even when it leans towards Aster’s commercial darling or Egger’s colonial nightmare.
Fundamentally, Luz is a study about people who mythologize suffering and cruelty and excuse it as being driven by outside spiritual forces rather than their own decisions. It’s about deconstructing harmful religious and cult mentalities, and it wears its philosophy on its sleeve (aggressively so). Alzate creates a visually and textually fascinating meltdown of his characters and the community they find themselves within.
I would say it’s a “descent into madness” if it didn’t feel clear that the characters were already in a tailspin right at the film’s outset. The script, especially through its second act, starts to feel repetitive and a little simplistic, with a somewhat anticlimactic ending and dialog that starts to feel less naturalistic and more tedious. But it’s an interesting dissection of a family, even if it’s rough around the edges.
Hyperreal Sense of Color, But Shaky Directing and Writing
The film’s most obvious and striking feature is its hyperrealist palette, bearing a rich Technicolor aspect that permeates throughout the entire runtime. Colorist Felipe Martinez U paints the mountainous countryside with such vibrancy, a simple but very effective contrast to the dying days of a cult the story centers on; bleak, muddy times, punctuated by vibrant nature all around. Aesthetically, it’s pretty clearly visually inspired by the early works of Pedro Almodóvar and the visual warmth of Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man.
Even the naturalistic tendencies of Terrence Malick make an appearance here, though how much of that is just in the gorgeous location scouting and how much is actually emulated by Alzate is up for debate. All around, the film lacks polish. The camerawork is amateurish in some ways, slightly cramped and occasionally uninspired in its framing. Sometimes the oversaturated look of the film can feel a little saccharine and heavy, but the pop of color here feels purposeful enough that I can forgive it as being highly stylized rather than trying to mask the weak points of a first-time director.
Is Luz: The Flower of Evil Worth the Watch?
In the search for great Latin American horror, Luz was an odd duck to stumble upon to be certain. But I’m a champion of strange birds with a lot of character, so you do the math.
Luz: The Flower of Evil is a struggle of a film, hard to watch at points despite how visually appealing it can be. It’s a brutal, bleak piece of psychological folk horror that certainly has a thin audience and will test the patience of even those the premise appeals to. But it does have as much substance as it does style, even when it treads into murky waters, and for that I think it’s worth the watch.
