Sinners

It feels like The Sinners was directed by two different Cooglers-one responsible for the first half, and another for the second. If I had to rate them separately: the first half is a solid 8, the second a disappointing 4.

The film starts off brilliantly. Set in the Deep South during the 1930s, it plunges us into a world of chain gangs, overt racism, and raw human struggle-all wrapped in the soul of music. The characters are distinctive and memorable, the performances are top-notch, and the world-building is rich and atmospheric. It's a western, a drama, and a musical all at once, and somehow it works. For a while.

Then comes the second half.

This is where things fall apart. The pivot to horror-specifically vampires-feels abrupt and half-hearted. There's barely a story holding it together, and the horror/action sequences barely last 10-15 minutes. They lack any real suspense or memorable set pieces. The execution feels rushed and undercooked, especially after such a powerful setup.

The final 5-7 minutes attempt a bold anti-Klan message, and it's likely this moment of violence and symbolism that won over many critics. But for me, it was too little, too late.

What's most frustrating is the wasted potential. This could've been a truly unique vampire film-rooted in history, rich in theme, driven by character and song. Instead, it leaves you wondering what could've been if the second half had lived up to the promise of the first.

I honestly don't understand the people who didn't like it.

In my opinion, it's one of the best films of last year, along with Frankenstein.

In the first act, we get to know the main characters - their backgrounds, fears, and ambitions. The film has stunning visual style and direction, and the performances are outstanding, which helps you connect with them very quickly.

The second act introduces the antagonist and reveals a major plot twist (for anyone going in without knowing anything about the story, this change in tone is actually a strong point).

The third act concludes with a climax that can be divisive. I understand that many viewers expected the same depth and coherence as in the first two acts, but you can clearly see the director's intention in shifting the tone and making it feel more like a B-movie. Instead of hurting the film, this reinforces its core idea: it wants to recreate the experience of watching multiple genres within a single movie.

As I said before, the direction is spectacular. From the music - which at times becomes a central narrative element - to the cinematography, everything is carefully crafted. The use of black bars that appear and disappear depending on the moment in the film is simply brilliant. I want to emphasize the music again because the score is truly exceptional. There are moments where you feel like you're inside a gangster club, and others where you're transported to an ancient castle in Eastern Europe, with musical notes reminiscent of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

Personally, I think it's a great film. It's far from perfect, but what it achieves has tremendous value in an era dominated by cheap remakes and massive, formulaic blockbusters.

I'm not saying the movie is bad, it starts great, gets a little slow and the ending was okayish. But it's getting more hype that it deserves. It seems more like a one time watch rather than a timeless piece.

The cinematography is brilliant, soundtrack is great but the script is just mediocre. The plot just drops after 30 minutes or so. The ending feels somewhat lazy.

Sinners is not a bad film so much as a protected one-and that distinction matters. It exists inside a critical ecosystem that has grown increasingly unwilling to say when a movie is merely adequate, undercooked, or conceptually thin, so long as it arrives carrying the right symbolic freight. The result is a work that mistakes moral seriousness for artistic rigor, and is rewarded for doing so.

The film operates in a now-codified genre: social horror as cultural commentary, dread as metaphor, symbolism as proof of depth. From its opening moments, Sinners announces its themes with confidence and clarity, and then proceeds to circle them without complication. What should be tension becomes repetition. What should be ambiguity becomes instruction.

The problem is not that the film has something to say. It's that it says it once, loudly, and then never finds a way to dramatize it. Characters are reduced to allegorical functions, their psychology flattened in service of an idea the film is anxious not to dilute. Horror depends on specificity, on fear that arises from human behavior, contradiction, desire. Sinners offers none of that. Its figures exist to signify, not to surprise.

Formally, the film hides behind the familiar language of prestige horror: long pauses, ominous compositions, deliberate pacing meant to signal gravity. But gravity is not the same as weight. Without narrative propulsion or emotional risk, the film becomes inert -- handsomely framed, carefully lit, and curiously lifeless. Mood replaces momentum; atmosphere stands in for drama.

What's most striking is how little resistance Sinners has encountered from critics. Reviews bend over backward to praise intention, relevance, and tone, while sidestepping the far more basic question: does the film actually work? This is not generosity-it is abdication. Serious themes do not absolve a film of narrative responsibility. Cultural importance does not excuse thin writing. Representation does not require lowered standards.

The irony is that this kind of critical deference ultimately does a disservice to the very filmmakers it claims to protect. By refusing to distinguish between ambition and execution, critics help normalize mediocrity wrapped in meaning. The bar becomes symbolic alignment rather than artistic success.

Sinners is competent. It is controlled. It is respectable. What it is not, however, is frightening, revelatory, or particularly memorable. And the longer critics pretend otherwise, the longer this cycle of solemn, overpraised, underpowered horror will continue, mistaking earnestness for excellence, and silence for depth.

I love it when movies mix different genres and create a fresh spin on old themes. In this case however the different elements didn't mix well in my opinion: I would describe sinners as a mix between period gangster drama, musical and trashy B-movie horror. This sounds super exciting on paper, but in reality it threw me off completely. I feel like the movie tries to do everything at the same time but doesn't deliver on many of those aspects: It wants to hit the viewer on an emotional level but left me personally completely cold - I didn't care who died or who lived; The movie kinda wants to be scary but the "enemies" in the film feel like a complete joke from the first scene they are shown and it takes away all the tension; It wants to be action-packed and explosive, but the fight scenes are kinda boring and left me wanting to move on to more serious scenes again, even though those serious scenes are kind of a slow burn; The film wants to be funny and even though it made me chuckle a bit it never really took it far enough to justify sacrificing the big threat in the film for laughs.

In conclusion: This movie is too boring and slow to be an entertaining action-comedy and doesn't take the humor and fight scenes far enough to really have an impact. At the same time this movie is far too ridiculous to be a serious scary and emotional movie that reaches you on any kind of emotional level.

I would have liked it, if they would have sacrificed the humor for building a serious threat that feels genuinely scary and terrifying. The cinematography, costumes and music are fantastic but this is just not enough for me to make it a good film, when the story is not hitting. There are single parts of the movie that I absolutely loved and I would have really appreciated those scenes as standalone music videos, but it just doesn't mix well with the rest in my personal opinion.

In addition to my previous criticisms I spotted some typical clichés in the dialogue writing that made me roll my eyes and there were some moments where I found it extremely hard to believe that certain characters survived. I could go in to detail here but I want to keep my review vague to avoid spoilers.

To me watching this movie felt a bit like eating chocolate on a burger - Both elements are nice by themselves but together they don't make for a nice meal.