Sinners

When Sinners opens its aspect ratio from 2.76 to IMAX® 1.43, it has to be mentioned in any discussion of the movie. Watching the screen grow is overwhelming, yet optimistic; feels similar when teeth touch each other. And this is only after the opening narration and logos.

Before the aspect ratio opens, the film begins with a black-and-white artwork depicting a man wearing a hat and carrying a guitar on his back. All presented in a 2.76 aspect ratio, the camera pans back, revealing more of the artwork, all while a guitar plays in the background. The opening narration begins reading, "There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true it can pierce the veil between life and death. Conjuring spirits from the past and the future." This line highlights music's crucial role in the movie, featuring many scenes of characters singing, playing instruments, and dancing to the beat. The setting for the second half is nearly all at a juke joint. Music encompasses the film so thoroughly and is a powerful element, so including it in the opening narration lets the audience know to take it seriously, as it is crucial to the film's uniqueness and identity. Uniqueness in this film comes from its music, which is so energetic that it serves as a constant beat throughout the film, never letting go, but rather tightening its grip without ever slowing down. This expression stands out and is memorable, making the film unique. The character Sammie plays his guitar and sings at the juke joint, uniting the crowd, so that his music becomes so powerful that many black musicians playing different instruments and genres, all from different eras, begin to appear on the screen. This reflects how throughout the film, in such as the man with the guitar revealed to be Samuel "Sammie", "Conjuring spirits from the past and the future," when musicians from the future appear throughout the juke as Sammie sings and plays, further highlighted by the fact that the start of the opening narration is repeated in the scene. Later, it is revealed that red eyes belong to one specific vampire. The narrator continues elaborating on how the legends are referred to in different cultures and concludes with the line, "This gift can bring healing to their communities. But it also attracts evil." While delivering the line's first sentence, there's an artwork of a man playing the guitar, with two people happily dancing. While the first lines highlight how music encompasses the film, these line highlights how music ties into the themes of the black community being found and put together, but white people are always trying to divide black people as a community. While delivering the line's first sentence, there's an artwork of a man playing the guitar, with two people happily dancing. When delivering the line's second sentence, the scene shifts to the right side of the artwork, where two people stand by a door inside, with someone right outside. The camera then zooms in on his eyes, which turn red, immediately after she says the word "evil." A loud sound plays, closing the narration, ending this opening to the film with a title card.

Set in 1932, the film features gangster twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) returning from Chicago to their hometown, Clarksdale, Mississippi, to establish a juke joint. On the juke's opening night, vampires show up and bite the crowd, turning them into vampires. The few survivors must withstand getting bitten til sunrise, where the daylight will burn vampires to nothing.

Although the plot has humans enduring evil vampires, the movie isn't an action film. The humans don't charge at the vampires with squeezed fists, their hands as a force of power, or grabbing onto a weapon; instead, they talk to the vampires, who fail to persuade the humans to join their vampire clan. This movie isn't a dialogue-driven picture where the conflict gets resolved by talking- it's a horror film. The vampires are prominent supernatural monsters that evoke dread, shock, gore, and disgust, yet not outright fear. Horror without fear isn't a thriller, as it isn't trying to be an exciting, fast-paced movie, yet it does contain some unexpected twists.

Thoroughly rooted in the 1930s American South, not understanding the basics of the movie's historical context leaves those with average U.S. historical knowledge confused about whether or not African Americans depicted in the film are slaves or emancipated. Lots of the African Americans are seen picking cotton- the most recognizable job of a slave- yet the twins are rich gangsters.

The first vampire is Irish, yet he doesn't have an Irish accent, and being Irish is essential to the vampire metaphor of those abused by white culture (Blacks and Irish) becoming vampires. The metaphor of connecting the abuse of white culture to the vampires doesn't make sense unless the audience members know things about the film, as stated in interviews and by the casting. But, by the context of just the story presented in the movie, it doesn't make sense seeing white vampires invading black spaces, but this falls apart as black people too become vampires. It works better as just a linear metaphor for racism.

The movie lacks a clear understanding of its metaphor, as it fails to specify the nationality of the vampires within its context. Suppose the vampires are Irish, and knowing the history of Cromwell. In that case, the metaphor is that for thousands of years, people have been suffering against the abuse of white culture, and how that lives forever as the vampires are ageless and immortal. Not knowing that vampires are Irish, as it isn't stated explicitly or suggested in the film, see that the film's metaphor is about how whites destroy black peoples sense of community, turn blacks against balcks, and cause these "sellout blacks" never to be free even though they get some freedom by siding with the white people.

Shots in dark colors appear amateurish due to poor color timing and solarization. When shots are surrounded by dark colors, they become blurry and feature numerous shadows, rather than allowing parts of the shot to appear as different levels of dark reflection. When dark shots have areas of non-black colors, they don't pop enough and are covered in the film's blur, which prevents the scene from looking beautiful. This results in the film having an ugly, dark greenish shade when it should appear as a heavily shaded and clear black.

Overall, the film is great.