"Sinners" (2025)

This is a horror film with ambition. Set in a racially charged, mythically tinged version of mid-20th-century America, it introduces itself with a rendition of "This Little Light of Mine." That song is both a tonal cue and a thesis statement. This is not just a vampire movie. It is a film about soul and light, temptation and transcendence, and most of all, the spiritual force of music.

The first two acts are striking. The cinematography is gorgeous and moody. The storytelling draws heavily on the tropes of vampire folklore. But unlike more literal genre fare, Sinners doesn’t just want to scare. It wants to explore. The vampires here aren’t simply predators. They are hungry metaphors. Their craving isn’t for blood alone. They long for connection. For spirit. For something they’ve lost and can’t quite name. They glimpse it when Sammy sings.

Sammy, the film’s spiritual and musical heart, doesn’t just carry the narrative. He is the narrative. His singing, rooted in gospel and blues traditions, isn’t about performance. His, like all good music, brings people together, binds them in shared memory and longing, and lifts their spirits. The vampires come not just to destroy him but to possess what he represents. And that is the key to the film’s most interesting thematic vein: music as spiritual power. This is why the films book-ends, and even a key conversation at the midpoint of the film, has characters argue that Sammy’s music should not be entertainment. It needs to be used in transcendency. It is church music. Worship.

In Sinners, music is portrayed not as an escape route from poverty, nor as a mere cultural product. It is a sacred trust. When used to uplift others and worship God, it illuminates dark places. When co-opted to manipulate, to seduce, or to elevate the self, it becomes dangerous, even demonic. Sammy’s music should call people out of despair and toward something holy. The vampires want that light for themselves but have no intention of being transformed by it. They want to consume the glow, not be guided by it.

This framing makes the first two acts rich and deeply promising. The racial dynamics, Irish vampires preying on a Black community, are present, but never fully fleshed out. (Little is done to explore the dynamic of one marginalized community preying on another.) There is a risk here. The metaphor walks a thin line between symbolic exploration and unintentional offense. The film flirts with deeper commentary about exploitation, but it never earns its way into a serious racial conversation. Instead, the racial dynamic works better when read as a spiritual metaphor. This is not about race per se, but about light and darkness, connection and consumption.

Unfortunately, the film’s third act and epilogue don’t live up to what precedes them. After the careful layering of spiritual themes and a growing sense of poetic unease, Sinners turns action horror, then makes a hard turn with the sudden arrival of a Ku Klux Klan mob. This moment, rather than deepening the racial tension or elevating the allegory, comes across as clunky and underdeveloped. It feels tacked on, as if someone decided that, for the themes to be taken seriously, they had to be literalized with hooded villains. But the horror of Sinners was already more effective when it was metaphorical. The supernatural evil was already telling the story. The historical evil, dropped in last-minute, seems almost cartoonish by comparison. Instead of strengthening the film’s message, it muddies it.

Even more confusing is the post-credit scene. While the film had already signaled its interest in the spiritual realm, with echoes of sin, redemption, temptation, and grace, the final scene seems to unravel what little coherence was left after the third act's stumble. It introduces what appears to be a new twist on the mythology or perhaps a cyclical curse, but with little context or payoff. Rather than offering a provocative final note or haunting ambiguity, the scene feels like a rejected teaser for a different, lesser film. It undercuts the rich metaphors about music and light that had carried the early story. Worse, it threatens to recast the story’s meaning altogether. It suggests something more nihilistic and less rooted in the moral and spiritual framework the film seemed to be building.

Which is a shame. Because Sinners, at least in its early stages, has something special. It treats Black gospel traditions not just as soundtrack material but as thematic substance. It dramatizes spiritual longing and the peril of losing one’s soul in pursuit of fame, escape, or false promises. The vampires are not just predators. They are those who’ve lost the ability to worship, to commune, to feel. Sammy’s songs call to them not just because they are beautiful, but because they remind the undead of what it means to be alive.

If only the film had trusted that idea more. The bookending scenes in church, with voices lifted in communal praise, show us what Sinners might have been. A vampire movie with real theological weight. A story about darkness not as identity, but as a place from which people long to be delivered. And music, not as career path, not as industry, not as trend, but as ministry, as light. Instead, by the time the credits roll, and then roll again, that light is flickering. The message blurs. The metaphors tangle.