Here’s Why Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’ Is More Than Just A Vampire Movie

Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s directorial follow-up to the beloved Black Panther movies, is different from its Marvel predecessors in many ways—for one, there are no superheroes here, just a cast of complicated characters who are trying to maneuver a world that isn’t fair. Instead of introducing us to a high tech society a la Wakanda, this film takes us back into the past to Jim Crow-era Mississippi, following twin brothers who return to their hometown after trying (and failing) to find a sense of freedom in Chicago. But Black Panther lovers will find something familiar here, and I’m not talking about Michael B. Jordan getting plenty of screentime—no, I’m referring to the use of genre fiction to tell a complex story about race, identity, and their nuanced relationship within American society.

This time, though, instead of getting superheroes and their morally complicated foes, we’re given a whole new enemy to chew on: vampires.

Vampires have existed in mythology and literature for centuries, though their popularity seems to come in waves. (Anyone remember the Vampire renaissance around 2008, thanks to Twilight?) Even just within the last six months, Nosferatu became one of the most talked about movies of the season, so it’s not surprising that another vampire tale has made it into the limelight so swiftly. But while vampires in media are often symbolic of desire, mortality, and even societal deviance, Sinners uses this mythical being to focus on a different conversation: cultural vampirism.

Warning: Some spoilers ahead.

Remmick, a vampire of Irish origin, seems set on one thing: He wants to recruit as many people into his clan as possible, because by doing so, he and his newly-turned vampires achieve a kind of hive mind that allows them to share knowledge and experiences with one another. He’s especially interested in Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore, whose extraordinary musical abilities can pierce the veil between time and space. And truly, this talent is all Remmick truly cares about—not Sammie as a person, simply the experiences and skills he can glean out of him to use as his own.

This metaphor will feel glaring to anyone who’s paid attention to the conversation around the appropriation of music, especially in Black communities—think blues, rock, and rap. It’s especially interesting when paired with the choice to make Remmick Irish, another culture that has struggled with the effects of forced assimilation while keeping tradition alive through music. To some extent, our vampire understands what it’s like to be his prey, to watch his culture and identity stomped out from his community and, to an extent, himself—after all, he was in their position once. When it comes down to it, though, that doesn’t stop him from becoming the predator, a warped version of what he once hated, even if he swears he’s different because of his anti-racist sentiments and his empathy for oppression.

Don’t believe me? Just look at the dancing sequences throughout the film. When Sammie plays, everyone around him comes alive, and timelines converge—it is a joyful, colorful scene filled with culture both past and future, a subtle nod to the fact that while things do change and evolve over time, you can still find their roots to the past intact. Culture, when allowed to survive, will grow and thrive. On the other hand, Remmick’s Irish jig channels his own experiences and pain, and while he dances to it expertly, he also forces the other vampires to do the same, though none of them share the same cultural understandings and, due to the hive mind, are unable to offer any of their own; the result is disjointed and eerie, and it lacks the vibrancy Sammie’s music brings. Remmick’s music isn’t inherently worse, but it does force others around him to sacrifice what is theirs and accept what is his instead.

But I don’t believe this is a story about “us versus them.” Or at the very least, I think it’s supposed to be a story that’s asking us to consider, “What about us AND them?” The enemy here is forced assimilation and loss of identity; it’s the cycle of sucking the life force out of someone or something for your own gain, only to turn around and do the same to someone else. It’s the way this can creep up on you, without you even realizing it; how it can infiltrate a community so quietly and easily, the way Hailee Steinfeld’s Mary, undead and bloodthirsty, slipped into the juke without raising suspicion. How we might not even recognize what’s happened until it’s too late.

And instead of thinking about what we might gain from this, Ryan Coogler asks us to consider what we might lose.

‘Sinners’ is now playing in theaters.