Sinners (2025)

[Mannahnin]

He is about the right age.

He's only 39, right? I was a teenager for OWoD and I'm ten years older.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

He's only 39, right? I was a teenager for OWoD and I'm ten years older.

I mean, my brother got VtM 1E in 1991, he was 11, I was 13. Revised came out in 1998 and the oWoD was still going pretty strong in 2000, when Coogler would have been, what 14/15? Coogler has a middle, maybe even upper-middle class background - he went to private school, for example (and not the low-rent "just for the religion" kind, the kind with a strong academic reputation and boarders and so on).

So it's highly possible, even somewhat likely he had some exposure to RPGs as a teenager, and VtM would still have been one of the "big boys" at that time (when I was at Uni in 97/98 it was by far the most popular RPG being played, the only one with multiple tables, and it had three).

On the other hand he's never mentioned it, and it's also possible it entirely passed him by - a lot of stuff which had strong VtM-ish vibes in the 2000s turned out to be by people who had definitely never played it, but were Anne Rice fans and fans of stuff like Near Dark, Lost Boys, etc. - I mean, you combine those two factors and you basically can recreate all of VtM except the "clans" from first principles.

My personal feeling is that is that he probably didn't, but other people on the film probably would have, and it's easy to imagine that might have had some influence on how the Chicago 1993 scene was presented.

 

[Necropolitan]

Someone made a homebrew D&D 5E 2024 Bard Subclass based on the movie.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Finally saw this last night and it was, as hoped, amazing.

I really liked how strongly Coogler leaned into the time and place -- is "haint" a word non-Black people outside of the South even know? -- and, more importantly, how he explicitly talked about the Black experience as a continuum, not a single point in time, and that the juke joint musicians were in explicit conversation with the past and future of both Black society and Chinese society.

It would have been very easy to have told a version of this story without the vampires and it would have been excellent, but Coogler committing to a no-fooling, this-is-a-legit-horror-movie vampires (instead of some art house take) really elevated both components.

As a result, we get a vampire movie with some real thoughts on its mind and a movie about the Jim Crow South that never feels didactic.

The soundtrack was amazing, and when I saw Buddy Guy's name in the credits moments before he appeared, I made an excited noise. What a great cameo.

He was the weakest actor (no shame in that) in a cast of past, present and future superstars. Any time you have Delroy Lindo as a mere supporting actor, you're bringing serious firepower to your film. Michael B. Jordan's performance at first felt a bit like a stunt -- look, they're wearing different colors and see how seamless it is when the twins hand off a cigarette between them? -- but it quickly became clear how serious he was about inhabiting each of the brothers and telling their parallel but not identical tragic tales. And Hailee Steinfeld, who I first saw in True Grit, a million years ago, continues to get better and better.

A remarkable movie, top to bottom.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's a sound review. I'll say that you can leave when you want; anything after the credits start is going to be an epilogue, and it's a reasonable position not to care about those (the first one is probably worth staying for, the second might well not be).

If you're someone who enjoys blues music, which I suspect a fair percentage of the audience does, the second epilogue features probably the greatest living blues man, which is pretty awesome.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

if you can see it in IMAX (I think it will get some screenings back after Thunderwhatever this weekend) do, as there is some brilliant aspect ratio change work throughout the film.

We have a nice big TV, but all of those scenes driving through the fields made me sorry we weren't able to see in in the theater.

 

[prabe]

If you're someone who enjoys blues music, which I suspect a fair percentage of the audience does, the second epilogue features probably the greatest living blues man, which is pretty awesome.

Wasn't that the first one (the one set in the late 1980s/early 1990s)?

 

[chuckdee]

We have a nice big TV, but all of those scenes driving through the fields made me sorry we weren't able to see in in the theater.

The changing of aspect ratio was incredible on the big screen.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

as much as I love racists getting shot, the KKK shootout after the climax felt wrong and unnecessary

I disagree. First, this is a vampire/horror/action/thriller, and the Grand Dragon of the KKK is a prime sort of villain to kill in such a story. And secondly, the twins -- for all their swagger -- had largely been defeated by white society, in the delta, in Chicago, and their "wins" involved getting out ahead of the Irish and Italian mobs.

Smoke being able to defeat the original evil at home was an important victory for him to claim in his final minutes of life and a way he could go be with his beloved and his child with his head raised high.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The answer, of course, is "none". That's not how movies work. That's not how stories, discussions, or even language works.

Man, now I want to write a vampire story where it's never explicitly stated there's a vampire, no one waves a cross at anyone's face, etc., but it's definitely a vampire story. A challenge, but definitely doable.

(And for people playing along at home, the So You've Met a Thousand Year Old Vampire solo RPG will be out next year and it sounds like it will explicitly be aimed at this creative space.)