The notion that certain music can conjure the devil isn’t a secret in most cultures. Ryan Coogler (FRUITVALE STATION, BLACK PANTHER) turns this into horror entertainment in SINNERS, Black American and white Irish music is enmeshed in an infernal orgy, and it’s all overloaded with Black American gothic mythology. Brothers Smoke and Smoke who escaped from Chicago (and from Howlin' Wolf's song “Smokestack Lightning”, but also from dozens of blues songs about the “Bad Man” “Stack-a-Lee/Stagger Lee”), pick up a case of Irish beer and a stack of money on the way, are back in Mississippi in 1932 and want to open a "juke joint.” In order to do so, they gather everything that’s necessary: the handsome young blues singer “Preacher Boy” Sammy, old blues musician Delta Slim, the voodoo initiated Annie, huge “Cornbread” as the doorman, and pretty young women Mary, Ruthie, and Beatrice. The “Wang-Dang-Doodle” (Willie Dixon) can begin.

But then Sammy's singing conjures up a burned Irishman who falls from the sky and invades the home of a KKK couple. Soon a devilish trio is standing in front of the door of the new club, singing about “Wild Mountain Thyme,” dancing wild jigs, and wanting to be let in. The more undead vampires there are, the more plausible the devil’s argument becomes: we could all live with each other forever and get on with each other. Motifs from the “cultural appropriation” debate briefly flit across the screen, but although the devil would love to get his hands on Sammy, both the undead and the living enjoy different traditions. The utopia of commonality between Black and white culture, however, remains on the side of the undead.

Spectacular dance and music scenes and bloody vampire bites make SINNERS one of the most successful films of new Black US cinema. The cast is excellent, especially Miles Caton as Sammy “Preacher Boy,” with his voluminous baritone and slide guitar playing, convincingly emulates a pre-war blues singer and recalls the story of Robert Johnson meeting the devil at the crossroads and suddenly becoming the best blues musician of all time.

Tom Dorow

Translation: Elinor Lewy