The Devil has all the best tunes, so the saying goes. Well if that’s true, Sinners suggests he stole most of them from black people in an act of cultural appropriation.
That’s the most obvious take home from Black Panther director Ryan Coogler’s barnstorming (and barn-burning) genre-buster. And what a full-on mash-up it is: action, horror, social commentary, comedy… they are all here, and then some.
It’s Mississippi, 1932, and Sammie (newcomer Miles Caton, acquitting himself excellently) bundles himself into his father’s church, shattered guitar neck in hand and face scarred.
Just to set the jump-scare tone, we get a very effective shock cut to the vibe to follow, before events flash back to the previous day, which begins with Sammie’s father Jedidiah (Saul Williams) admonishing him for playing the blues at a disreputable juke joint. “Keep dancing with the Devil, one day he’s gonna follow you home,” Jedidiah prophetically warns Sammie.
So far, so ominous. Things fall a little flat as the much-trailed Michael B Jordan double act (playing twins Smoke and Stack) arrive in town, back from a gangster life in Chicago where they appear to have ripped off the mob and everyone else.
Their plan is to open their own juke joint in a rundown old barn bought from a hog of a white guy (clearly a no-good racist slimeball). However, they don’t half take their sweet old, ponderous time driving around town, gathering the personnel to run the bar.
There’s nascent guitar legend Sammie, blues old-timer Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and Smoke and Stack’s respective former lovers (Wunmi Mosaku as medicine woman Annie and Hailee Steinfeld’s feisty Mary).
Then, just as you’re wondering if this film isn’t quite the rip-roaring gorefest you were hoping for, Jack O’Connell’s Remmick swoops down to earth as if he’s just spent a day blistering himself raw under a robata grill. Only pure evil can possibly be walking in his trousers.
And then icky-creepy as they come Remmick wants in on the dance party, and all supernatural hell breaks loose. It’s basically a flesh-spattered battle to the end for the souls of all the folk at Smoke and Stack’s joint; and for the spirit of black music itself.
But this is where confusion will probably set in, as Coogler appears to have more in mind. Is Remmick a self-styed white saviour? Possibly. Are there other serious issues we might be contemplating? Possibly. The problem is that among the discombobulation, many may find the themes hard to grasp.
It's an almost brilliant piece of work, but like the bullet-riddled bodies that pile up, there are so many nagging little holes here that meaning slightly drains away like squandered blood in a leaky colander.
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You will, however, be massively entertained. And don’t forget to stay after the credits for a rather telling and tickling coda. The “Devil”, it seems, is still at work…