Ryan Coogler's Sinner's Movie: The True Sinners and Cultural Vampirism

Tymika M. Chambliss-Williams

The Sinners' Movie with Michael B. Jordan as Smoke and Stacks, written by Ryan Coogler

After seeing The Sinners Movie, my husband and I engaged in a paradigm-shifting conversation regarding this simple question, "Who were the sinners?" Now, as a church cultured person, typically, my thought process would leap towards scriptural references that gave specific details on the characteristics of sin; however, this time was different. So, allow me to extend an invitation to my unorganized, unfiltered dissertation on Sinners.

To me, the so-called “sinners” weren’t just the vampires lurking in the Delta night; they were the culture vultures. Those who extract, reshape, and repackage identity for their own benefit. In this story, vampirism isn’t just a metaphor for violence or lust, it’s a lens through which we witness spiritual and cultural warfare.

You see, each character in the film embodies something vital to the ecosystem of community wealth, community growth, and community unity... until you meet the vampires... and Mary.

Smoke and Stack aren’t simply club owners.

And at the heart of it all are Smoke and Stack. Twin brothers, yes, but more than that, they are dual symbols of resistance and inheritance. They fled Chicago carrying stolen debt but also legacy, and sought to rewrite their story in the Mississippi soil. Their decision to open a juke joint wasn’t just a business move. It was a reclamation; a spiritual and economic outpost planted in a hostile world.

Smoke is the pragmatist. Grounded. Calculated. He’s constantly measuring risk, trying to maintain a future. Stack, on the other hand, is the visionary. Restless. Emotional. He leans into intuition, even when it leads into dangerous territory. Together, they reflect the complexity and beauty of Black masculinity under pressure, trying to protect, build, and survive all at once.

What they build is more than a venue. It’s a sanctuary. The juke joint is one of the few places where Black joy, grief, history, and creativity are allowed to coexist freely. It becomes a microcosm of resistance, planted in a world that wants to forget them.

But as the film progresses, the cracks begin to show. Not just from external threats, but internal tension. Their bond, while sacred, is tested by the very thing they are trying to preserve, the future. AND, the vampires see that! They don’t just attack the body of the community; they go straight for the core. Smoke and Stack are not just targets because of what they own, but because of what they represent. Legacy. Vision. Love. And systems that thrive on extraction cannot survive when those things are intact.

So when we watch their struggle, we aren’t just watching a family drama. We’re watching a war over memory, structure, and the sacred act of building something that was never meant to last, but must.

Then we meet Mary.

She’s drawn into the orbit of Remmick, an outsider, seductive in his subtlety. Their encounter doesn’t just trigger a plot point. It activates an old strategy: question the sufficiency of the self-sustained. Suddenly, Mary wonders if the community needs outside help to grow. And just like that, the soil becomes vulnerable.

But Remmick is not just a character; he is a symbol. He represents the polished face of infiltration. The kind that doesn’t barge in, but blends in. He is charming, intellectual, and seemingly benevolent. He doesn’t take, at first, he offers. Solutions. Resources. Insight. And that’s exactly what makes him dangerous.

Remmick embodies the seductive nature of faux integration and unity, a figure that promises advancement while quietly disarming its subject. He’s not interested in joining the community. He’s interested in reshaping it, destroying it, and rebuilding it in his image. Through Mary, he plants questions. Doubts. Seeds of reliance. His goal isn’t to destroy from the outside; it’s to erode from within.

He is the evangelist of assimilation. He’s the one who tells you that survival means compromise, that safety lies in sameness. And when Mary begins to wonder if the community can thrive without external help, she’s not just making a personal choice, she’s repeating a historical pattern. That moment becomes the turning point. What began as a tight-knit body begins to loosen its grip. And just like that, the soil becomes vulnerable.

The vampires don’t invade with fangs first; they come cloaked in compassion and unity. “We are all one. We just need to be kind to one another.” It sounds good, even holy. But in reality, it’s a spiritual decoy. It replaces principled unity with abstract togetherness. It preaches peace while dismantling power. It is the gospel of assimilation, the enemy of collective clarity.

Now let’s talk about Annie.

Her death wasn’t just a turning point; it was a spiritual rupture. Annie wasn’t merely an elder; she was the ancestral anchor. She carried the quiet authority of lived wisdom, the kind that doesn’t need to speak loudly to be felt deeply. Her presence was a bridge, connecting the living to the unseen, the past to the present, the sacred to the everyday. When Annie walked into a room, she brought with her generations.

She represented the soul of the land, the embodiment of oral tradition, ritual, and remembrance. Her death wasn’t random, it was strategic. Because when you’re trying to overtake a people, you don’t start with the loudest voice. You start with the root. You start with the one who holds the codes, the one who knows the names, secrets, and wisdom not written down.

Once Annie was gone, the atmosphere shifted. What had been sacred ground became unsettled soil. Her death cleared spiritual space, and not in a good way. Because without her, the people lost their internal compass. The loss of memory is the beginning of manipulation. And when memory is gone, narrative becomes vulnerable. It can be rewritten, reshaped, or even sold.

Then there’s Sammy. His blues weren’t just melodies; they were medicine. Sacred gifts passed through pain, wrapped in rhythm. The vampires didn’t just want Sammy. They wanted what was in him. They wanted access to the creative frequency that connected past, present, and future. His music was a doorway, and they sought to steal it, distort it, and sell it back under their name.

But Sammy also represents a spiritual tension. He stood at a crossroads: stay with God or stay with the Blues. During the 1930s, that was more than a preference, it was a moral crisis. The church considered the Blues taboo, almost sacrilegious. Some even believed Sammy sold his soul to the devil, a haunting reminder of Robert Johnson. Whether that’s true or a myth, we don’t know. But what we do know is this: something changed.

By the end of the film, Sammy's juke joint tells a different story. His employees are all white. His band, predominantly white. That visual shift is not accidental. It asks the question: Who really owns the sound now? The very gift that once flowed from ancestral sorrow and spiritual depth is now filtered through a lens that has no memory of its origin. That’s not just appropriation. That’s possession.

Sammy wasn’t just a musician. He was a vessel. And vessels like him are always targeted by systems that understand the power of sound and the spirit behind it.

The vampires didn’t come for blood alone, they came for the community's essence. For secrets. For their souls.

Coogler is telling us: watch who you let in. Not everyone smiling at you is on your side.

Sinners isn’t just about blood and bodies. It’s about cultural infiltration. Mental colonization. How easily a community can be manipulated to turn against itself if it loses sight of what makes it whole.

So yes, the vampires were the sinners... are the sinners. Not because they killed, but because they manipulated. Because they rewrote reality and called it progress. Because they infiltrated unity and turned it into pacification. The real sin wasn't in the bloodletting, it was in the reprogramming.

This is much bigger than vampires and blood. This is society’s mirror. An untouched level of accountability.

Here is a key factor to remember: those who let them in were sinners as well. Not in the sense of evil, but in the sense of agreement. Of invitation. The doors weren’t always broken down, sometimes they were opened.

Whether out of fatigue, fear, or hope, some within the community aligned themselves willingly or unknowingly with the very forces that sought to drain them. That’s part of the horror too. The complicity. The surrender. The trade of unity for comfort, or authenticity for access.

Sin, in this film, is not just what is done to the people; it's also what the people give away. And maybe that’s the biggest horror of all!

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