Metacritic reviews

The way Coogler resolves Sinners’ central ideas within a traditional horror story framework is truly masterful. He plays the audience like a fiddle. Or a blues guitar.

This is a one-of-a-kind experience that simply doesn't come around very often. Hyperbole or not, I'm willing to bet we'll be talking about "Sinners" for a long time to come.

As much arthouse as grindhouse, it’s a blood-drenched mix tape that shouldn’t work. But it does, thanks to Coogler’s muscular direction, a terrific cast, enveloping IMAX visuals, body-quaking sound and music that stirs the soul while setting the pulse racing.

It’s a sweaty, intoxicating, all-nighter of a movie, and its allure cannot be denied.

With Sinners, an inimitable auteur makes the most of every surrealist detail and crafts a fright fest that’s musical and meaningful, mesmerizing and memorable.

As Sinners accelerates toward its climax, none of it feels wasted. Its action is explosive, and while Coogler’s vicious momentum can be visually disorienting at times, the adrenaline and the way he tethers each character to a distinctly spiritual question ensure that the movie’s strengths far outweigh its flaws.

Sinners is nothing if not a film about genre, and the distinctly American imperative of cross-pollinating between them to create something that feels new and old — high and low — at the same time.

Its opening monologue speaks of music’s ability to “pierce the veil between life and death”. Sinners, in all its beauty and horror, proves the same can be true of film.

Sinners is propulsive and stirring entertainment, messy but always compelling. The film’s fascinating array of genres and tropes and ideas swirls together in a way that is, I suppose, singularly American.

For many, the movie could as well do without the supernatural element, and I admit I’m one of them; I’d prefer to see a real story with real jeopardy work itself out. But there is energy and comic-book brashness