Sinners – Sunday 27th April 2025

Firstly, I am all about auteur driven cinema, and original films versus works based on existing “I.P.” so I want this movie to succeed. I also REALLY wanted to like it!

The whole world and their dog has been raving about how good it is, so there’s definitely a lot of hype surrounding it.

...I just got back from the cinema, so my thoughts are fresh.

Man, what an absolute disappointment!

It felt overly long, self-indulgent, completely lacked focus in its storytelling, and was often just plain boring. Also, it suffered from ‘Return of the King’ syndrome, in that it simply did not want to end! There’s like three endings to this film! (including the two post-credit scenes; a completely unwarranted Marvel trope)

It’s like the filmmaker wanted to make a story about The Blues in Mississippi, centred around two brothers, but thought it wouldn’t be commercial enough, so threw in a story about Vampires to sell the idea.

The latter seems so irrelevant to the overall story, that they’re literally just there to add an ‘exciting’ climax to the final act. If I didn’t know that this film was made with the filmmaker having unprecedented control, I’d guess a ‘dumb’ studio exec only green-lit the film on the basis that they shoe-horn some Vampires in at the end!

The film is well-made, the music and cast are all decent, but it’s absolutely nothing special. It’s an ‘okay’ movie, which in any other decade of cinema, would merely be a ‘B-Movie’ to keep the cinema screens busy until something better came along. Frankly, it’s a sad sign of the times that this is being hailed as some modern masterpiece.

It reminds me of Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ (also by Ryan Coogler) which was hailed as the best superhero film ever made, and even nominated for Best Picture, when in fact, it was mediocre at best.

I believe the modern parlance for this movie would be ‘mid’. Fair-play to Ryan Coogler though; whatever he does, both Hollywood and the audience seem to love. Personally, I think his best film is still ‘Fruitvale Station’.