Sinners Is Terrifying, Thrilling, Sexy & Surprisingly Romantic. Let’s Unpack That Ending

Major spoilers ahead. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners isn’t an easy watch. That is, it will have you sitting up straight, shifting towards the front of your seat, squirming in terror, and holding your breath. It’s unflinching, enthralling and entertaining, a wild ride that never lets up and pushes you to think, to imagine, to feel. The first hour unfurls like the climb of a rollercoaster, inching you towards an exhilarating descent into madness. The anticipation of the drop is its own thrill, with the dread of the film’s inevitably gory climax looming over the quiet character development of its first half. In an era of the easy, throw-it-on-in-the-background slop movies streamers churn out, Coogler treats his audience with respect, delivering a smart film that takes itself seriously while still having fun. Reunited with his muse, Michael B. Jordan, Sinners is Coogler at his most free. It's a meticulous and ambitious masterpiece. It’s challenging and provocative. It’s also surprisingly romantic. It’s packed with metaphor and meaning, religious allegory and racial commentary, complimentary and conflicting genres, breathtaking performances and stunning sequences that barrel towards an electrifying conclusion that requires processing and unpacking — I’ve been thinking about it every day since I screened the film weeks ago. 

But let’s start at the beginning. As we meet Smoke and Stack (both played with thoughtful precision by Jordan), the prodigal twins of Clarksdale, Mississippi, their ambitions are clear: after spending years as enforcers for Al Capone and bootleggers in Chicago, the boys are back to open up their very own juke joint. They prefer the South, the devil they know. As they tell their cousin Sammie (newcomer Miles Caton is a revelation), “Chicago is a plantation, just with taller buildings.” Smoke is more reserved and pessimistic, the “bad cop” of the duo, while Stack is unrestrained and slightly more boisterous, the risktaking, jazz-loving lil’ brother. Their love interests also showcase the differences between the identical twins: Smoke’s former love is Annie (a wise, raw, and riveting Wunmi Mosaku), a spiritual medicine woman still reeling from the grief of losing their infant child, whose potions and hoodoo knowledge come in handy later. And Stack’s old flame is Mary (a saucy and unguarded Hailee Steinfeld), his white-passing childhood friend with Black ancestry that shows up in her relations, not her face, who is still pissed at Stack for ghosting her.

Through Annie and Mary, we get to know the brothers more. Stack is reckless enough to get involved with a white(ish) girl but smart enough to distance himself to protect her from the optics of their seemingly interracial union (it is 1932 afterall). Smoke is still in love with Annie but their loss broke him, and them, and he’s burying himself in his business with his brother to try to forget. It’s naive to hope for a happy ending for either of the two pairings, yet you find yourself rooting for one anyway. It’s a testament to Jordan’s insurmountable skill that he has rousing chemistry with both Mosaku and Steinfeld — with entirely different dynamics and mannerisms with each — but it’s his scenes with Mosaku that scratched my brain. Together, they are devastating. Smoke and Annie’s romance, the love story at the centre of Sinners, is slow and sensual, rooted in history and heartbreak. From their first scene, the viewer is invested, and so was Wunmi Mosaku. 

“[When I read] the scene with Smoke and Annie in the shop, I had never cared so much about two people I knew so little about, but felt like I knew their whole world,” Mosaku told Unbothered’s Claire Ateku during the film’s press day in New York City. The moment is the movie’s sexiest, a stirring, intimate love scene starring a dark-skinned Black woman with curves, something you rarely see onscreen, period, let alone in a massive blockbuster. “I felt like I understood their hope, their love, their grief, their connection, their understanding,” Mosaku continued. “When I read those seven pages, I just felt so inspired. I was like, oh, people are making art that matters — that excites and fulfills. And I said to Ryan, ‘thank you for writing something that has gotten me [to fall] back in love with my craft.’”

Ryan Coogler’s love of his craft is on full display throughout Sinners. This is an artist who cares deeply about his medium, and you can tell through every exquisite detail: the entrancing and addictive score (Ludwig Göransson), the staggering cinematography (Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the film was shot on IMAX 70mm cameras), the era-specific and intricate production design (Oscar-winner Hannah Beachler) and the impeccable costumes (thee legend Ruth E. Carter). But it’s in the storytelling where Coogler shines most. 

After Smoke and Stack buy a building to turn into a juke joint from a shifty looking white man who swears the Klan doesn’t exist anymore (sure, bud), they each spend the day preparing for the grand opening that night. Sammie, also known as Preacher Boy, rides with Stack and they pick up affable drunk and local jazz celeb, Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo is as charming and enigmatic as ever) who will be the night’s headliner. Preacher Boy shows off his heavenly voice and affinity for jazz music, but his father, an actual preacher, rebukes the genre as the devil’s music, like most good Christians did back then. Preacher Boy seems to be loosely based on the legend of real-life blues musician Robert Johnson whose guitar was said to have been tuned by the devil at a crossroads, granting him musical prowess. In exchange for his soul, the myth goes that Johnson was given great guitar skills which launched him into blues infamy. In Sinners, Preacher Boy’s guitar is a hand-me-down from his cousins and the devil isn’t the blues, it’s a vampire in the form of a white man, Remmick (a terrifying Jack O’Connell). 

While Smoke was on the other side of town securing food, booze, supplies and a sign from Chinese American shopowners Grace and Bo Chow (Li Jun Li and Yao) to create the perfect space for his community to convene and celebrate, Remmick is turning a couple (whose well-placed Klan paraphernalia proves that the KKK is alive and well) into his own clan of vampires and just after the sun sets, they go straight to the juke joint to rain on an uninhabited night of Black joy. Through its vampires, Sinners asks, "who should we let into our spaces? And how much of ourselves do we give up when we do?"

It may seem a little on-the-nose to have blood-sucking, melanin-deprived vampires act as a stand-in for culture vulture white people who have pillaged Black land, music, and art for their own gain for centuries. But the metaphor isn’t hamfisted in Coogler’s hands; it’s perfect. Of course a vampire story is the ideal way to allegorize white supremacy, gentrification, and appropriation. Of course vampires come in and suck the life out of a Black celebration. Coogler brilliantly explores the different ways in which whiteness exploits and pilfers — violently, purposefully, and sometimes subtly. As the juke joint is thriving, hookups are happening and the party is raging, you’re left in suspense, wondering how it all falls apart and who is going to infiltrate this safe space. The answer is, of course, the whitest person Smoke and Stack know: Mary. She leaves to talk to the banjo-playing strangers who have asked to be let in. Whiteness is why she goes outside. Her proximity to Blackness is why she’s allowed back in. That, and Stack’s greed. Money, and his attraction to Mary, end up being his downfall. 

Later, when Remmick has wreaked havoc and created monsters out of club goers, he promises freedom to Smoke, Annie, Delta Slim, Preacher Boy, and the other last-standing survivors — something he knows Black folks of that era are desperate for — and inclusion without the threat of racist violence, they just have to give up their souls… and succumb to vampire violence. So, to choose one life of bondage for another. Once again, Smoke picks the devil he knows. Remmick tries to convince him through a speech about how Black folks will never be free in the Jim Crow South, no matter how much money they acquire, using the racism of other white folks as a shield against the harm he wants to inflict (sound familiar?) and assuring love and acceptance. The lies Remmick sells can be read as a vampire just trying to lure his prey, but they are also the lies white supremacy sells to Black folks. Conformity, nor excellence, will save you. Like the cliches go, these vampires have fangs and hate garlic, but instead of sex, they are offering acceptance through assimilation. In Sinners, assimilation equals death. 

When it’s revealed that Remmick just wants Preacher Boy’s voice — which we know can transcend time and space through the film’s more original, arresting, lyrical, and mindblowing scene (seriously, I gasped out loud in the theatre) — the con comes into focus. Remmick isn’t a savior, he’s a leech. Not since Jordan Peele’s Get Out has a horror movie tackled the terrors of racism in such a smart and unrelenting way (though many have tried). And doing all that with jazz as the soundtrack and the beating pulse of the film is genius. White people stole the blues. Sinners isn't just about reclamation, it's about preservation and a radical reimagining of what it means to conserve culture, no matter the cost.

Sinners is more than just a Southern gothic horror flick like it’s been billed. It is that, but it’s also an enthusiastic musical, a consequential period drama, and an earnest romance. It’s the latter that piqued my interest the most, and its execution is swoon-inducing. I already knew Mosaku was a star, but in this role, she’s assertive, luminous and so damn sexy. Some will say the title belongs to Sammie, but Annie is the heart of Sinners. She’s also its hero.  

“I like to think of Annie as Smoke’s other other half, like Stack is,” Mosaku said. “Stack is one side of him, but Annie is another side of him. She's his protector, lover, mother, safe place. She is his sanctuary.” Annie’s knowledge of the spiritual world also saves everyone’s — including Smoke’s — asses. “She moves with purpose. She moves with strength and power. She has such an anchored spirit and is so in tune with the other stuff that we can't see or feel or hear. She sees and feels and hears it.” Near the end, Annie is the one to tell the remaining humans not to let their friend and the night’s acting bouncer, Cornbread (Omar Miller), in after he’s been turned. She teaches them how to stake a vampire in the heart. She also puts them onto the good ol’ garlic trick. Through her spiritual practices, she becomes their first line of defense and sacrifices herself (she tells Smoke she would rather die than become a vampire) to be their savior, like so many Black women do. 

“Annie was someone who I really looked up to and was inspired by, and I found parts of myself within her, parts of myself I didn't know existed within her,” Mosaku, who is British-Nigerian, shared. “With hoodoo, I didn't know about it. I'm now introduced to Ifá through the Europe Yoruba, a traditional religion I didn't know about. And so now I'm introduced to my ancestry, my ancestors, parts of our strength and healing and our traditions. I didn't know I was missing it. That was quite profound for me.” 

That profundity is apparent in Mosaku’s performance, and in the film’s sublime ending. You could read it as tragic — Stack is a vampire and Smoke, like Annie, dies in a blaze of glory as he takes out the racist landlord and his KKK gang as they try to take back the juke joint the next morning — but you could also interpret the film’s end as hopeful and almost happy, like I did. As Smoke is dying, after being shot by the KKK, he reaches into the afterlife and sees not just Annie, but their child. Their family is finally together again. He delivers a final blow to the cowardly villains and succumbs to his fate, seemingly joining his love and their baby.

Mosaku agrees: “I think it's a happy ending… Ultimately, [Annie] feels sorrow for anyone who was turned into a vampire. She says it perfectly, they can't feel the warmth of a sunrise and they have to live amongst all this hate in this world,” she said. “These two are now connected in the ancestor world forever and by creating life together. This is the right way to join the ancestors. Is the right way everything else is to be trapped in a world of hate and pain and sorrow. So yeah, I feel like ultimately, [Smoke and Annie] are reunited.”

Smoke and Annie get to be together for eternity in the spiritual realm, while Stack and Mary stay together in the physical world as vampires. Preacher boy Sammie lives out his life as a musician and in a shocking post credits scene (a nod to Cooger’s Marvel tenure), he gets a visit from his immortal cousin and his white-passing undead partner. Stack may still be walking, talking, and breathing, but he died that day at the juke joint. Stack calls the day of Remmick’s attack the best day of his life, because it was the last time he saw the sunrise and the last time he saw his brother. "For a few hours, before the sun went down, we were truly free."

Sinners is a sentimental exploration of love and loss, of faith and consequence, of the duality of humanity and the perseverance of spirit, and for the unassailable fact that Black folks will survive and persist — in the face of evil, of racism, of white supremacy, of mystifying hate and insoluble madness. Smoke and Annie chose to hold onto to their souls and to cling to love; the one thing that can never be taken. 

Sinners hits theatres today, Friday, April 18.

For more of our interview with Wunmi Mosaku, subscribe to our newsletter for a special edition.