I was hesitant to see Sinners (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2025) for a number of reasons; personal triggers around representations of blackness in media chief among them. When multiple hhhwhite-caucasoids (emphasis on the aspirated hhh) insist on the quality of black art, I’m immediately side-eyeing. And the reason for this feels pretty obvious to me (apart, perhaps, from my own internalized racism)—that is, as far as I’m concerned, so much of my identity within blackness has to do with resistance. We survive because we resist the social entropy that surrounds us at every turn (or fold with remarkable grace into it). Tbh, I’m generally reluctant to indulge in too much black media because, in my eyes, black media rarely captures the complexity of who and what we are, how we survive, how we find joy and thrive. It chafes against what I know to be true. Attempts to capture black life—attempts, in essence, to apprehend the fullness of the shadows we occupy and break forth from, arrest us in ways that I think dangerous and exhausting. It’s what made my stomach turn whenever I saw promo for Sinners—

In other words, the hype train creates a dubious glow around blackness that very quickly unearths a host of perversions (i.e. fetishization, authenticity, virtue signaling)—a lot of which we become complicit in and all of which we are subjected to and objectified by. There is also the fear that I might find myself represented a bit too well, and that sort of mirror can be equally painful. Point is, don’t try to pin me down bitch. I don’t like it. Let me live my lightskint black life.

But Sinners is…harmless. Maybe even toothless (ironically)? Sinners is, like its male lead (though, I’d argue, not the film’s main character—that’d be Sammie), very pretty and very corny. A popcorn film (in most ways) enjoyable to watch, satisfying to ponder, and a little tedious. A romp through the garden of blackness. A morality tale I find myself, even now, wanting to watch again (and maybe again). It is a film that delights because it’s never too heavy-handed, because its metaphors and tropes are easily accessible, recognizable, and map well to a host of black experiences (across time and space). And it is a film that, despite all of the above, manages to say nothing much at all. Sinners is willfully and woefully and wonderfully agnostic about everything contained within its slightly too-long runtime—and, in so many ways, runs counter to its own moral and ethical position. It is, as your least favorite preacher might call it, double-minded.

I will try to remain brief because it’s my first and only day off in several weeks and who needs another thinkpiece that will age like dogshit. With my initial hesitation to see the film came a desire for it to have been, like They Cloned Tyrone, a Netflix deepcut I could watch at home with kin and talk through. The film lends itself to that kind of viewing and props to Coogler and co. for consistently making films (with the exception of Fruitvale) that allow for contemporary manifestations of the ancient call-and-response impulse that exists in our bones. Sinners is fun like that, but also as buttoned up as its doubled male lead, Michael B. Jordan. As the camera pans left across Smoke (Michael B. Jordan) to reveal his twin brother/cuzzin Stack (Michael B. Jordan), I found myself appalled and mumbling a good goddammit that’s one more Michael B. Jordan than I needed. But I really do love Michael B. Jordan. I find him compelling (look at that face!) and also a little wooden, awkward, like a kid in a man’s body. It’s part of his charm. He’s, as my friend Omari described, something like a black Keanu. And that’s the best and also saddest way to describe him (because must we rely on another great hhwhite to lend credibility and visibility to an excellent black actor?). But that, I think, is precisely where Jordan’s acting falls a bit short. The older I get, the less inclined I am to believe the things I say because I actually only care to praise and uplift the efforts of any artist making something happen—even more when they succeed in making me feel anything at all! But actors, like any other artists, are a mosaic of the influences that shape their love of craft. With Michael B. Jordan, I see the interstitial spaces where reside many of his notable influences. Stack (Michael B. Jordan) gestures toward young musician Sammie (Miles Caton) with a flip of the wrist reminiscent of Denzel in Malcolm X pontificating from a temple pulpit (around the 26 second mark).

I suppose it’s not really a critique I care to own because I enjoy Michael B. Jordan in most everything he does. He feels, indeed, like a cousin. And I delighted in this moment of quiet homage to an actor we’ve both grown up admiring and culling affect from.

The characters Smoke & Stack offer a sort of animus and anima (respectively). When Stack dies (sort of), so too does Smoke—now unhinged, uncoupled from his other balancing half. Smoke, without Stack, begins to rely on the weapons of his survival (a colt 45 semi-automatic pistol, perhaps standard WWI issue, a Chicago typewriter, grenades, brutality and bribery, et al), only to realize his standard tools are not capable of delivering him from this unprecedented threat. He has to adapt. Crucial to understanding this is his beautigious other half, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) the spiritual heart of the film. She, unsurprisingly, does the heavy lifting (hello black women!) in the narrative, making clear to our trapped protagonists that the predators here are beyond what money and guns can do to protect us—our only recourse must be natural and supernatural, must come from an awareness of our history, our connection to the earth, to the sun, to truth—to a willingness to liberate ourselves from the means that oppress us (and seduce us with their power). But I found the discourse around religion, both Christian and African, muddled and insecure. Annie invokes a variety of West African traditions (which is part and parcel of American HooDoo), but it lacks focus and grounding—strong-armed into a narrative about vampires. And Christianity, again, runs right into that age-old trope of the master’s religion—a religion whose sacredness, for us, is only rescued by a musicality the masters could not kill.

Even so, this commingling of music and religion as salvific offers another recognizable and satisfying trope of monolithic blackness (eye-roll). The great blues music scene (spanning past, present, and future) was, for me, a cringe-worthy (while beautifully rendered) spectacle. But, as my friend Omari also reminded, this is an important moment perhaps for younger viewers with little to no historical context for the black media they consume (beyond the handful of seconds TikTok offers). It is hugely important for us to recognize that I am, because we are—that we don’t, as black people, exist only in the trouble halo of the hhhwhite gaze. That said, SUPER corny. Here we go again, I thought, falling back on this trope of the music providing a sacred, nigh-religious freedom—the music this, the music that, the music blah blah blah. How romantic and tired. This broken record about the records we produce (which are also constantly stolen from us and burned and erased) is really a tribute to the transcendent power of black creativity—which is not alloyed, in this framework, to money or fame or even prestige, but a capacity to channel (as would a griot, fili, or firekeeper) one’s cosmic continuity in the present. But it’s true—music and religion have saved more than a few lives in my family. Notably, my maternal grandfather, Elias Sanchez (hah! Elias!). Musicians have long been our record keepers, our soothsayers, the restorers of our dignity. And it does my heart good to see that truth on screen in this Color Purple x. Dusk Til Dawn mash-up. It’s a pretty heart-healthy message, especially as the government is making every effort to erase us from the ledger.

As is the broader message of trying to build black safe spaces (juke joint, church, etc) while surrounded by vampires. Alas, this message, I think, gets garbled in the greater spectacle of the action. And as a black entrepreneur, I want it shouted from the rafters. Because, sure, black spaces are frequently surrounded by hhhhwhite vampires and klansmen in and out of their bedsheets. But it hurts different when it’s your own. And often, it is your own. Sometimes, skinfolk ain’t kinfolk.

This is where the film falls back on a kind of agnosticism. In our lovely little mid-credit scene when little Sammie has grown up into (surprise!) Buddy Guy, he’s visited by Vampire Stack with his stacks (Stax?) of cash and his white-passing vampire-beloved whose name I’ve already forgotten because gee-whiz another tragic mulatress (we really need to figure out how to deal with that trope). The two are deathless and Coogi’d-down-to-the-socks and offer him the same glamorous gift thrust upon them lo those 60 years back. He gently refuses, but remains intrigued by the idea. And so, by film’s end, the white-washing, evangelical force of vampirism seems to endure (where black nobility loses, ages, closes shop, succumbs, dies).

The film’s agnostic position implicitly asks you to choose. But, be honest, you already know what you’ve chosen. (Or what has chosen you). And odds are—ethically, aesthetically, morally, politically—you not on team Buddy Guy because team Buddy Guy is life on hard mode.

Sinners fails as both a morality play and a horror. It is, by turns, a comedy with intimations of who and what it thinks we should be. It offers a kaleidoscopic vision of blackness, a bit too abstracted for figuration, and preaches morals in blood-soaked bloomers. But none of the above disqualifies its flash of spirit—which is transcendent. A love letter is a love letter, even if it’s not well written.