The ‘Sinners’ Cheat Sheet: A Historian's Guide to Ryan Coogler’s Vampire Epic

SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t seen Sinners yet, you might not want to read any further. Check it out at the Playhouse on IMAX this week and then come back here for a closer look at the film’s historical backdrop.

In Sinners, director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther) imagines a pair of twins (Michael B. Jordan) who return to their hometown of Mississippi circa 1932. Over the course of a single night, they throw a huge bluesy party with their nephew Sammie (Miles Caton) that turns deadly when a horde of Irish vampires (led by a nefarious Jack O’Connell) threaten to overtake them.

The result is tense and bloody as one might expect from a horror movie, but it’s also a lot more than that: a historical meditation on the history of music, juke joints, and communal spirit at a seismic moment in American history.

On opening night of Sinners at the Southampton Playhouse, artistic director Eric Kohn was joined by historian Jessica Elliott, the executive director of the Southampton African American History Museum, for a post-screening discussion about the real-world backdrop of the film. These are edited excerpts from their conversation.

ERIC KOHN: The centerpiece of Sinners takes place at the juke joint. How would you describe the significance of juke joints in African American history as well as within the town of Southampton?

JESSICA ELLIOTT: Music and community play a central role in this film. This is a story of migration. The African American community here in Southampton is derived from a story of migration. So many African American people came from various places within the South and settled here to build community. My museum is one of those spaces. It used to be a barbershop. People would come to get these personal services, but in that space you would find community.

A juke joint was a space where people didn’t think about what happened during the day. People felt free. These spaces existed here in Southampton as well. At the turn of the century, after long days in agriculture here in Southampton they would find themselves in juke joints, dancing to music, free from the toil, free to be together, free to exist, no worries, no cares. I think that's one of the most powerful things you see in this movie.

What do you make of the specific role that music plays in the film?

Music is a form of spirit that transcends both time and space. We have to remember that within this country, I think just about everybody has some from somewhere else – whether through slavery or immigration. Whatever vehicle people found themselves in this country, parts of their past came with them. It’s very important to understand that those pieces never left; they just found a way to meld together.

In other words, there’s a lot going on here aside from vampires. How important are the tropes of the horror genre in Sinners?

It's a horror film. But if you were to ask me, I believe that the horror starts at the very first part of the film. To me this movie is scary all throughout. That freedom from the juke joint is always questioned, that joy is always threatened, their existence is always threatened – long before the vampires show up. Remember that one early scene with the snake in the truck? There’s always a threat present. You see them buying their building and understanding the threat of the Klan long before the vampires show up.

How important are specific spiritual references in the story?

Very. At the end, when Smoke takes off that mojo bag, he’s taking off his protection. The whole movie he has on that bag and when he's fighting with his brother, his brother can't bite him. That’s not just a gimmick. It was very real in those communities.

The movie takes place in 1932, the same year that the Southampton Playhouse opened. What’s the significance of that period as it plays out in the film?

It’s important to think about what was happening just before 1932. The main characters in Sinners, the twins, were soldiers who served in WWI. Right after WWI, you have the Johnson Reid Act of 1924, which slowed immigration into this country. We're talking about European immigration from various countries throughout Europe. We're also talking about Asian countries, mainly China and Japan. It’s not an accident that you have two major Chinese characters in the film. It shouldn’t be lost on anybody that the main antagonist is Irish, either. He is trying to survive, too. It's not just African American people who are under a constant threat. It's anybody who is not of the dominant group.

And the brothers have been trying to fit in around the country.

So many African American people left the South in the middle of the 20th century to come North and didn’t know what was waiting for them. They found that the North didn’t offer freedom – it was just the same threat wearing a different face. So they went back home. With this film, Ryan Coogler is beautifully presenting what’s known as cyclical migration. That’s what Smoke and Stack are doing. You leave to go to one place and then find yourself right back where you came from. When people migrated to the North, they didn’t just stay here; they went back, and they continued to go back, again and again.

Now, Sammie in Sinners goes to Chicago, and I don’t think he goes back to Mississippi ever. But he says that he remembers it for the greatest night of his life. He never wants to go back home because there is trauma and grief waiting for him there, violence visited upon his body that he doesn’t want to talk about. This migration in the middle of the 20th century happened around the country. It isn’t until after WWII that you see migration to the West coast, with communities in places like Los Angeles and Oakland where Black people started migrating instead of going North.

Oakland is where Coogler’s uncle wound up after migrating from Mississippi. It was his stories that inspired Sinners. As we move forward on the timeline, let’s talk about that mid-credits sequence set in the early 1990s. Most importantly: Why is Michael B. Jordan wearing a coogie sweater?

I think it shows you that this transformation the character goes through is the evolution of music and culture. He’s wearing a sweater that was big in the 1990s, and Versace glasses, that are very reminiscent of a very specific point in time. That shows you that the movie is not only about the evolution of music but the evolution of spirit.

How would you recommend Sinners to someone afraid of horror movies?

That’s my mother. She’s not a blood-and-gore kind of fan. When I told her I saw this film, I said that it was a story of migration. It’s about music and religion. It poses a lot of questions about how spirituality is intertwined within Black communities. That’s how I presented it to her. Also, there are nice men to look at in the film. [laughs] That helps.

Watch our interview with Ryan Coogler below: