Sinners: Evilness behind the Facade
Blogger: Callie W.
Image from Sinnersmovie Instagram Official Account
SINNERS (2025) - Redemption has a price. Director Ryan Coogler has created one of the most anticipated and compelling period pieces of the year. Sinners tells a gripping story about twins who return to their hometown to open a juke joint, only to have their opening night disrupted by an ancient evil. Beyond exploring the classic "don't disturb the devil" theme, Coogler powerfully depicts the harsh realities of racism, including KKK terror, that plagued the 1930s South.
African Americans during this era faced systemic poverty and brutal discrimination. Coogler masterfully directs scenes showcasing cotton picking, African Americans struggling to find decent employment, and the dangerous consequences of crossing racial boundaries in 1930s America. This film is not only spectacular entertainment but also an important historical lesson.
African American Struggle in the 1930s
The Great Depression hit African Americans harder than anyone else, turning an already difficult life into a desperate struggle for survival. By 1932, half of all African Americans had lost their jobs, and in many Northern cities, angry white workers demanded that Black people be fired first - arguing that as long as any white person was unemployed, African Americans had no right to work. The economic desperation fueled a terrifying rise in racial violence, especially across the South, where lynchings nearly tripled from eight in 1932 to 28 in 1933. While President Roosevelt brought new hope by welcoming African American visitors to the White House and seeking advice from Black leaders - giving many a sense of belonging they had never felt before - the harsh reality remained that discrimination was still baked into New Deal programs, and Roosevelt often stayed silent on civil rights issues to avoid alienating Southern politicians he needed for support.
When you understand the brutal reality of what African Americans endured in the 1930s, Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" (2025) becomes even more powerful. Set in 1932 in the Mississippi Delta, the film follows twin brothers trying to outrun their past and start fresh, only to discover that sometimes the evil you're running from is nothing compared to what's waiting back home. What makes Coogler's approach so brilliant is how he uses vampires - creatures that literally feed on human life - to represent the very real predators that were already draining the life from Black communities in 1930s Mississippi. The racism, the economic exploitation, the way those in power systematically consumed the hopes and dreams of an entire people - these weren't supernatural horrors, they were everyday reality. In Coogler's hands, the vampire becomes the perfect metaphor for a system that fed on Black suffering, where the true monsters didn't need fangs or the cover of darkness to destroy lives - they had Jim Crow laws, economic exclusion, and racial violence, and they operated in broad daylight with society's blessing.
Source: Library of Congress. "Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s." Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945: U.S. History Primary Source Timeline. https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/great-depression-and-world-war-ii-1929-1945/race-relations-in-1930s-and-1940s/
Forbidden Fruit
One of the most heartbreaking storylines in "Sinners" is the tragic love story between Mary and Stack. Picture a young woman who gave her whole heart to a man, only to have him vanish without a word when the war came calling. Mary didn't just lose her lover when Stack got drafted for World War I - she lost her future, her dreams, everything she thought her life would be. For years afterward, she clung to hope like a lifeline, waiting for the man who had promised her the world but couldn't even manage a goodbye. Meanwhile, Stack came home from the war, packed up his life with his brother Smoke, and headed to Chicago - never once looking back at the woman who was still waiting for him.
By 1932, Mary has learned to survive in the most painful way possible - by pretending to be someone she's not. As a light-skinned Black woman passing for white in Mississippi, she's found safety at the cost of her very soul, living every day as a lie while carrying the weight of abandoned love. When Stack finally walks back into her life, it's not the fairy-tale reunion she once imagined during all those lonely nights. Instead, it's messy and raw and filled with all the anger and hurt that comes when someone you loved completely proves they never loved you the same way. Their connection is still electric, still passionate, but it's also poisoned by years of silence and Stack's inability - or unwillingness - to give her what she's always needed. Mary's love never wavered, but Stack's emotional walls have grown too high, leaving them both caught in an endless dance of reaching for each other and pulling away.
The Devil is Alive
Imagine two brothers who've spent years running from their mistakes, finally coming home with their pockets full of dirty money and their hearts full of hope. Stack and Smoke thought they could wash the blood off their hands by building something pure - a juke joint where their people could forget their troubles, where music could heal wounds that the world kept tearing open. They bought that old sawmill from a white man who probably laughed at the idea of two Black men thinking they could create something lasting in 1930s Mississippi. But for a brief, beautiful moment, it seemed like redemption might actually be possible.
Then the devil came calling, and he wore the face of an ancient Irish vampire named Remmick. This creature had been wandering the earth for centuries, collecting loneliness like scars, and when he heard their cousin Sammie's guitar singing through the night air, something inside him snapped. He became convinced that the music held the key to bringing back everyone he'd ever lost - that if he could just turn enough people, create enough vampires, he could build a family that would never leave him again. What started as the brothers' dream of community became Remmick's twisted vision of eternal bondage.
The night everything fell apart, Stack and Smoke found themselves fighting a war they never trained for - not just against fangs and claws, but against the darkness that had always lived inside them. When Stack got turned, when brother had to face brother with death in his eyes, it broke something in both of them that could never be fixed. Smoke had to kill the person he loved most in the world, and even after he helped Sammie destroy Remmick and his monsters, even after the sunrise burned away the last of the evil, the devil still claimed his prize. As that final bullet found Smoke's heart, as he died seeing visions of his lost love Annie and their daughter, you realize the cruelest truth of all - sometimes winning means losing everything, and sometimes the only way to save the people you love is to make sure you're not around to see them safe.
