Sinners (2025)

[darjr]

I loved it. Want to watch it again.

 

[Morrus]

The shark first appears what, 80 minutes into Jaws?

It’s not a shark movie!

 

[Rabulias]

I loved the more fey influence to the vampires. So many vampire stories focus on the sexual overtones, and while that can be an appropriate and interesting theme, it gets difficult to do something different. This was different but still felt like the vampires were familiar. Music and storytelling being highlighted as powerful forces felt very fey to me, and pulled in three diverse musical heritages. I also found the hive mind aspect of the vampires leading to a more communal existence for them to be an entertaining new wrinkle.

I have read that Ryan Coogler has done like Tarantino and made the deal with the studio that ownership of the film reverts back to him after 25 years. Obviously he feels strongly about this film.

 

[chuckdee]

Because among the many other topics the movie addresses it's dealing with the relationship between African Americans and Christianity in the United States. The opening scene is even a sermon being given in a church.

Don't forget the third triad in that... and how it relates to sin. Music. That triad is what makes the whole thing so powerful - especially the beginning, the one-shot, and the ending. It's just chef's kiss

 

[Retros_x]

It’s really a social commentary movie gift wrapped in a vampire thing and there are parts that are just weird (the drooling and the drooling x scene)

I consider a horror/scary movie to be scary and have no problem with social commentary

Most good horror movies have social commentary, because they reflect what makes us in modern societies anxious, what do we feat etc.
The plot completely resolves around the vampires, its clearly a vampire movie. The vampire is the main antagonist.
Horror movies have fear as main emotion and that is true for this movie too. If YOU were scared is a very subjective matter, but the movie clearly tried to scare viewers multiple times, in a way that is probably too soft for horror movie veterans, but that doesn't mean its not a horror movie.

I ask the other way around: What genre do you think it is? In my world the inclusion of fighting vampires as main story conflict excludes all other genres as main genre for this movie, although other influences are there of course.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In my world the inclusion of fighting vampires as main story conflict excludes all other genres

That, I completely disagree with. I can think of fantasy, comedy, romance, martial arts, superhero. etc, movies featuring fighting vampires. But the best movies transcend convenient genre labels in any case.

 

[wicked cool]

So I’m going to put sinners in the same category as Django unchained (considered a western by it’s really about the horrors of slavery)
Part 1 of Django is a western and then it’s a revenge movie about slavery. So is it a western or a movie about slavery. Many categorize it as a western
A good movie but I’m not sitting down and treating it like a western. It’s a depiction of the brutality of slavery wrapped in a western

The themes are similar

If I was. Say an college English teacher I would play these movies to see what students think the themes are

 

[Mannahnin]

A big feature of Tarantino's movies is routinely to subvert the genre while also celebrating it. Reservoir Dogs is a "heist movie" where we never see the actual heist and even the "planning scenes" skip virtually all the details of the actual crime and are mostly just about the characters interacting. By comparison Django is more of a Western, in that it gives you basically every scene and trope you expect from one, but also puts a giant central emphasis on slavery where most of the old Westerns bowdlerized it, and the elephant in the room for the time period was left off-screen.

Sinners is certainly also about cultural oppression, colonization and exploitation, and the legacy of slavery, but I don't think that makes it any less of a vampire movie. The vampires are also predators and exploiters, and Remmick represents the exploited who assimilates into the power structure enough to become an exploiter in turn. Much as the Irish in America integrated sufficiently to start being considered "white" and participate in racist power structures as oppressors instead of the oppressed. Stack, too, is preyed on and becomes a predator himself, where Smoke refuses, does his best to protect others, and claims his (literal or figurative) heaven of reunion with his loving family. In Dracula, the vampire is ALSO a metaphor, for disease and infection, for sexual repression and feared expression, for predatory aristocrats... But that doesn't make it any less a vampire story.

 

[chuckdee]

but the movie clearly tried to scare viewers multiple times, in a way that is probably too soft for horror movie veterans, but that doesn't mean its not a horror movie.

I know those scares in the church in the beginning startled me- and most reviewers I've seen they made jump also. Putting them at the beginning rather than the end was a great idea, I thought.

 

[chuckdee]

Much as the Irish in America integrated sufficiently to start being considered "white" and participate in racist power structures as oppressors instead of the oppressed

A great show that shows this cross is Warrior, originally on Showtime. It shows the Chinese, Irish, and non-recent-immigrant Whites as both oppressor and oppressed in a way that is quite satisfying and transcends the genre of martial arts show.