Ryan Coogler’s secret project starring Michael B. Jordan is called Sinners, and it’s a vampire movie. This will be tough for Lainey, because MBJ is playing a dual role and looks equally hot in both parts, but Sinners also looks scary and, well, she doesn’t do horror. I do, though, and I am down for Sinners.
The trailer gave me Lovecraft Country vibes right off the top, with the genre blend of horror and period drama—Coogler calls the film “very genre fluid”—but by the end I was feeling more Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, one of the best vampire flicks ever made. In that film, vampires are not sexy, they’re terrifying and pathetic in turn, capable of great destruction but ultimately wretched creatures with no home of their own, living a cursed not-life where they can never stop running.
I’m also getting some “elevated horror” vibes, which is the term people throw around when a horror movie is well written. Also, the fact that almost all the vampires shown in the trailer are white and they appear to be preying on a Black community is pretty obvious symbolism. I’m here for it all, though, from MBJ’s dual role to Wunmi Mosaku to Delroy Lindo, to Hailee Steinfeld and her demented vampire grin.
After Coogler went to lengths to keep the plot of this film under wraps, though, I wish the trailer didn’t give so much away. I get not wanting to trick people who aren’t down for a scary movie, but they blew Hailee’s big vampire reveal, and that kind of sucks. Still, I am seated, as they say, for Sinners. Especially for twice the MBJ. Honestly, the trailer could just be two minutes of MBJ smiling like THAT. You really don’t have to sell hard when MBJ is your main selling point.
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