Sinners

Now horror isn't quite my thing but the amount of buzz surrounding Ryan Coogler's Sinners certainly caught my interest and I was very curious to see what it was all about. It was an original film, released in 2025 and doing well at the box office so something just didn't add up! Hopefully this will give studios hope that if you find the right ingredients then they can look beyond sequels and remakes to keep cinema afloat. 

Set in the hot Mississippi in 1932, two twins, known as the Smokestack twins, plan to setup a new legitimate business out of the money they made working for Chicago mobsters. Their aim is create a juke joint for their fellow African Americans where they can relax and socialise without fear of the Ku Klux Klan but a mysterious form of trouble soon finds itself at their and that's where things take a drastic turn. 

Sinners is best described as The Thing meets From Dusk Till Dawn, and Coogler successfully makes for a great thriller, which is nicely paced throughout and carefully blends drama with some small comedic moments. It is a whole lot of fun across the 138 minutes of running time, and the cast featuring two versions of Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo and Jack O'Connell are all great. It also packs a punch with the visuals and the use of music gets very creative. 

Some still might find the film takes its time in the setup and I could agree that more time could have been spent in the heat of the action. The very final act also left me somewhat underwhelmed as a character puts themself in harms way unnecessarily but if only to help round-off the film. These are minor quibbles though, only things that came to mind after watching it, and I still had a blast while watching this.   

Sinners is a very entertaining film with lots of gothic deep-south thrills and is an easy one to recommend for fans of the genre. Sure, some of its influences are quite blatant but that didn't hurt my experience in the slightest and it's great to see original films like this succeeding at the box office.