Two brothers on the run from their dark past make their way south. They come to a rowdy bar in the middle of nowhere. Some rip-roaring music plays and people drink and dance and let loose for the night. Then everything goes straight to hell when an ancient evil rears its ugly head.
Spoilers follow.
Of course, I’m not describing Ryan Coogler’s new period horror movie, Sinners. I’m talking about Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s campy 1996 crime/vampire flick From Dusk Till Dawn. Actually, I’m describing both movies at the same time, because while Sinners may be closer to a literary work than a B-movie, the two films have a remarkably similar structure, right down to some very specific plot points that I won’t spoil here.
This isn’t a ding against Coogler’s film. Sinners is brilliant. It contains one of the single best sequences I have ever seen in any film, a moment that transcends time and space, that is as much poetry as it is cinematography. A scene that could only work in this specific medium in the hands of a genuinely skilled filmmaker. But there’s no denying that Sinners and From Dusk Till Dawn draw from the same bloody well.
Two Tales Of Two Brothers
From Dusk Till Dawn is about a pair of brothers (George Clooney and a deliciously psychotic Quentin Tarantino) on the run from the law who kidnap a family (Harvey Keitel plays a retired preacher and Juliette Lewis plays his daughter, who along with her brother are on a family roadtrip gone terribly wrong). The brothers hide in the family’s RV and escape with them across the Mexican border, where they come to a massive trucker stripclub where they’ve set a meet.
The only problem? This particular stripclub is actually a vampire den that lures truckers to their death with the promise of flesh and booze. It’s basically like two movies stitched together. The first is a crime drama filled with classic Tarantino dialogue and characters. The second is a vampire horror slasher filled with action, Salma Hayek, nudity and lots and lots of gore, as a small group of misfits bands together in order to survive until dawn.
Coogler’s film also feels like two films stitched together. The first is about twin brothers who return from Chicago to a small town in Mississippi to start their own juke-joint. They come loaded with cash and other ill-gotten gains. It’s also about cotton pickers and poverty and and old-time religion and the looming presence of the KKK and Jim Crow laws, couched directly between two World Wars. The second half is about a diabolical evil that still somehow feels less terrifying, and more endearing, than the Klan. Once the festivities get going that night, vampires arrive, kill most of the merrymakers, and surround the building. A small group of misfits has to band together to fight their way to dawn and freedom.
There are some significant differences, of course. The vampires of From Dusk Till Dawn live in the Titty Twister and invite the guests in to prey on them. In Sinners, a vampire cannot cross a threshold without invitation, and must use trickery to infiltrate the brothers’ juke-joint. There’s also a small bit with a group of Native American vampire hunters who show up too late at the home of a pair of racists who have already unwittingly invited a vampire inside. I’d watch a spinoff movie about these indigenous slayers of the damned. The vampires of From Dusk Till Dawn are also comically evil, whereas there is a weird humanity to Coogler’s monsters.
The most glaringly obvious difference between the two films is that Tarantino and Rodriguez set out to make an homage to classic B-movie horror whereas Coogler is telling a story of oppression and struggle. From Dusk Till Dawn is campy and bombastic, though the writing is still fantastic and the characters are genuinely great. It’s not really trying to say anything particularly profound. Coogler may be paying homage to classic horror, and certainly to From Dusk Till Dawn, but his film dives much deeper, digging into heavier themes like racism and cultural assimilation. Tarantino and Rodriguez also spend a lot more time killing vampires in creative ways (holy water in super soakers, for instance) whereas Coogler focuses more on relationships and history prior to the vampires’ arrival.
Songs Of Freedom
Both films have great music, much of which is performed in the bar as part of the story, but Sinners makes that music integral to the story. There’s one scene where Preacher Boy (Miles Caton) plays for the crowd that I won’t spoil here. Suffice to say, it is one of those great moments in film that promises to stick with you forever. I would go back to the theater for a second viewing just to drink in this remarkable moment again, though I suspect it might sound even better on my own sound system. Sinners is a no-brainer when it comes to buying the 4K Blu-Ray when that’s released. Another scene, where the vampires sing and dance an Irish ditty in the dark, is nearly as powerful. Music here, for both the living and the dead, represents the past, present and future and, perhaps most importantly, freedom.
And Sinners takes another trick from Tarantino’s later films, giving us a bloodsoaked ending reminiscent of Django Unchained or Inglourious Basterds.
Michael B. Jordan plays both brothers, “Smoke” and “Stack” and puts in quite possibly the best performance of his career. At first it’s a little uncanny to see him standing next to himself, talking to himself, passing himself a cigarette, but pretty soon you forget that this is the same actor playing these two characters, at once so similar and yet so strikingly unalike. The supporting cast is phenomenal and includes Hailee Steinfeld, Li Jun Li, Omar Benson Miller, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Delroy Lindo and Jack O’Connell as the mysterious and charming vampire, Remmick. Everyone gives it their all.
Could it have worked as a movie without the paranormal? Absolutely. There was enough here to play this one straight, skipping vampires in favor of just the KKK, for instance, though I think that would have left out some very interesting commentary on assimilation. Might it have worked a little better if the script had introduced the vampires into the mix sooner, or linked Remmick to Preacher Boy earlier in the story? Perhaps. Ultimately, the movie works just the way it is, and I wouldn’t change a thing.
I’ve already spoiled enough in this review. Go see Sinners on the biggest screen you can find, though as gorgeous as the film’s visuals are, and as sexy as it can be at times, it’s the music and sound that make this film crackle and groove and thump and thrum and sizzle and burn so very, very bright.
Just be sure to stick around after the credits roll.
