'It doesn't stick to the rules': The reason Sinners has become a true box-office sensation

BBC ^ | Apr 2025 | Nicholas Barber

[CondoleezzaProtege]

After great reviews and buzz, Ryan Coogler's vampire film had an extraordinary second weekend at the box office. It's a victory for a wholly original big-budget film in a cinema landscape dominated by familiar franchises.

…Featuring Michael B Jordan as a pair of twins defending their juke joint from vampires, Sinners is a horror film – but it's also a blues musical, a gangster thriller and a deeply-researched period drama about Mississippi in the 1930s. It doesn't stick to the rules of one particular genre, and it isn't based on existing intellectual property (IP), so audiences don't come to it knowing how it's all going to play out.

… Reviewing a new Hollywood film often comes down to answering one question: "Is it slightly better or slightly worse than every other Marvel/ DC/ Star Wars/ Alien /Jurassic World/ King Kong film I've seen?" But Sinners is idiosyncratic enough to prompt other questions, which may explain its box office momentum, as word-of-mouth has spread.

… This unorthodox quality is a sign of the freedom that Coogler felt when he was making it. All of his previous films were adapted from other material – or from true events, in the case of his debut, Fruitvale Station – but he told The Atlantic that with Sinners, he didn't want to use IP as "something to hide behind". He wanted to make the most personal film he could – a "love letter" to a late uncle from Mississippi – and that meant a film which didn't follow conventions.

[drjimmy]

I particularly liked all of the music and the wild, hallucinatory dancing set pieces. Not that I didn’t like the story or the acting, but for me those scenes set this film apart from being just a vampire movie.