Sinners

For years I've been emphasizing the importance of music in movies; how an amazing musical score can significantly elevate a movie. It shouldn't just be background dressing. It should be brought to the forefront. It should drive the story. It should be a character in itself. It should give you goosebumps in the big moments. Sinners is one of the best examples of this.

Aside from the music, I could tell I was watching high-quality filmmaking within five minutes. The directing, camerawork, editing, and sound design are pristine. The entire cast does a great job, but Michael B. Jordan shines. He is a superstar.

Sinners is also surprisingly funny, without taking away from the seriousness. And the horror elements are... satisfying. This movie goes hard.

(2 viewings, opening night IMAX 4/17/2025, 11/21/2025)

The plot for this movie is pretty much lifted from Dusk to Dawn. You introduce a handful of characters and get them all to a single location where they are then attacked by vampires. Sinners is much slower, more of a William Faulkner version of a vampire movie. The production design and cinematography are excellent. The cast is very good. The music is good. Everything about this production top notch.

However, I struggled to get through this. There were many long scenes where the dialogue became cumbersome. It felt like the whole movie was a slow burn moving toward a rousing climax of horror, but when they got there it was underwhelming. It never delivered the scares or the sense of danger.

First half of the movie was very good. Great character set up. Second half of the movie the plot progressed very quickly with nothing particularly interesting happening. Not much of a story line involved and movie ended abruptly. The acting was great, Michael B Jordan did a wonderful job playing smock and stack and some of the supporting characters were great as well. The movie was filmed perfectly. Music was obviously great as well. Plot and storyline did not move the needle for me. Post credit scene was cool!

I really thought I was going to love Sinners even before I saw the glowing reviews, but after seeing so much hype I was really excited. Unfortunately my expectations weren't even close to being met.

Not a whole lot happens in this movie, to describe the plot would only take one sentence. The filming was done well and the music elevated the overall film but it just falls flat and it left me feeling unsatisfied. I expected more from this and wish it had been as entertaining as I was promised.

First of all: this is not a horrible movie, but it sure as hell isn't what the ratings make it out to be. It's sort of like From Dusk Till Dawn, but then with a predictable and not so good second half. And, as is the problem with a lot of movies these days: it's about an hour too long.

I really liked the first half. Up until the scene wherein Sammy makes music at the Juke Joint, which seems wildly out of place to me. It wasn't funny, smart and totally unnecessary in my opinion. Everything after that was cliche, full of the standard horror tropes and just not that good in my opinion. The acting is pretty good, the imagery is beautiful, but all in all it really falls short as a horror movie and overstays its welcome by a long shot.