‘Sinners’ Is A Horror Flick With A Lot On Its Mind

Ryan Coogler’s blood-soaked film mixes vampires, Delta blues, the Jim Crow South and twin Michael B. Jordans. A lot of it works — some of it doesn’t.

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There’s a scattered sequence midway through Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” where the Jim Crow-era horror flick completely abandons expectations of twin Michael B. Jordans fighting off bloodthirsty vampires to transport viewers to a time-warped fever dream in the centralized juke joint.

Sammie, aka Preacher Boy (played finely by newcomer Miles Caton, who toured with H.E.R.), is singing and playing a rousing blues number on his guitar when you notice a breakdancer in the crowd getting down in the middle of the floor. Next, a hip-hop DJ spins on turntables with a group of gang-bangers off in the next room, then a girl straight out of the ’90s twerks without a care while the camera later pans to a band of Chinese dancers and an African drummer onstage — the dizzying list of misplaced characters goes on. All these cultural elements, a kaleidoscope of the past, present and future, fuse on the dance floor while the fiery walls of the building burn down around them.

If it sounds like there’s a lot going on, that’s because there is. But this is essentially what the entire viewing experience of “Sinners” is like — chaotic, electric, stirring, engrossing and, at times, confusing.

That’s not to say “Sinners” isn’t a bold piece of cinema putting Black horror back in the spotlight, because, for the most part, it is. It’s the biggest swing Coogler has ever taken in a silver screen spectacle and also his first completely original — and most personal — film as both writer and director. After only ever helming franchise IP (“Creed” and “Black Panther”) and a biographical debut (“Fruitvale Station”), perhaps that’s why “Sinners” feels like sensory overload, for better and worse.