Verdict
Summary
This movie should have been only 90 minutes, but features great music, an excellent performance by Michael B. Jordan and an intense final 30 minutes.
Plot: Twins Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) set up a speakeasy in the Mississippi Delta, only for the music from their cousin, Sammie (Miles Caton), to draw in a few local vampires.
Review: Clocking in at a bloated 137 minutes (bloated for a vampire flick, at least), Sinners would have been a much better film if it were 90 minutes. Basically a re-telling of From Dusk till Dawn, but as a period flick, featuring plenty of racial overtones, the first half is slow, to say the least. It’s not helped that almost everyone in the cast is mumbling in a Southern accent, save for Hailee Steinfeld.
Let’s get to the good stuff: Michael B. Jordan is excellent. He’s completely believable as two separate characters, each one showing different personalities that allow you to distinguish between them. Delroy Lindo is always a treat and gives his usual charismatic performance. Hailee Steinfeld is a bit lost in this movie, but she’s a beautiful girl, so she’s always welcome in any film.
The music is fantastic. The movie is a love letter to the Blues, and one show-stopping number feels like a history of popular music. It’s by far the most creative scene in the entire movie. There’s also a wild Irish jig scene that brought a smile to my face and was, in my opinion, the best part of the entire movie. The music is definitely the best part of this movie.
The last thirty minutes are intense and finally bring some action and tension to what, to that point, feels like a period drama. Vampire movies can write themselves sometimes, especially when it’s a group of vampires surrounding an enclosed area where a bunch of survivors are preparing to survive. There is one notable jump in the movie that got me badly.
That’s the good. The problem with the movie is, the pacing sucks. The setup takes too long and focuses too long on characters that aren’t endearing enough for me to care about. Really, Michael B. Jordan and Preacher Boy are the only two characters you care about. The head vampire is charismatic enough to be a suitable bad guy, but the film has an excess of characters that don’t matter and that I didn’t care about. It would have been much better if they had cut the first part of the movie in half.
For those looking for action or gore, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Most of the vampire kills happen off-screen, or are truncated so that you only see a bit of the attack. There is some blood (and strangely, drool), and the vamps have neat glowing eyes. The movie is faithful to vampire lore (with the exception of, kill the master, you kill the rest), so there’s that. For action, literally, there’s nothing until the end of the movie. By then, it’s a case of too little, too late.
So, don’t go into this movie thinking you’re seeing a horror or action movie. This is a period drama with elements of horror and action. Take it for what you will; I found it another case of modern Hollywood over-indulgence, a genre flick trying to pretend it was something more. Considering the subject matter, I’ve seen some of the critical praise for this movie and am not surprised. If you think you’ll get an intelligent vampire movie that delivers on thrills, it doesn’t. It’s a slightly above-average period drama thanks to the spurts of horror and action you get.