Sinners (R)
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Caution: spoilers.

This is a vampire film, and apparently a Southern Gothic horror film, but it takes a long time before any of the vampires show up and the horror starts. So I think of at least half the movie as being just a period piece.

It begins with a bit of narration (which will be repeated later in the film). Then, in 1932 Mississippi, we see a young man named Sammie "Preacherboy" Moore drive up and enter the church where is father is the preacher. He's obviously been hurt, and he's holding the neck of a broken guitar, which his father tells him to put down. Then the movie flashes back to the previous day, when Sammie's twin cousins "Smoke" and "Stack" (both played by Michael B. Jordan) arrive in town. They've spent the past seven years in Chicago, working for the mob. Now they've stolen money (and apparently alcohol) from, I believe, two different gangs (Italians and Irish), and they come home and buy a sawmill, which they turn into a juke joint. They recruit Sammie to play guitar for them, and a guy called Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) to play piano. They hire a guy called Cornbread to be the bouncer, a woman named Grace Chow to paint a sign for their juke joint, and her husband Bo to provide food for their customers. Smoke's wife, Annie (a Hoodoo practitioner) becomes their cook. Stack runs into his ex-girlfriend, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who is part Black but passes for white. He had left her seven years ago when he went to Chicago, but she's waited for him all this time, and is upset that it took so long for him to come back. Sammie meets a woman named Pearline, who he's attracted to. She says she's married, though I have no idea if that was true or not.

At one point, wee see an Irish vampire named Remmick take shelter from Choctaw vampire hunters, with a married couple named Bert and Joan. He turns them both into vampires. I don't remember at exactly what point in the movie this happens, but it seemed to me like it was about halfway through the movie. I could be wrong. Anyway, it's a relatively brief scene before we get back to the opening night of the juke joint.

Mary shows up at the joint, unexpectedly. So does Pearline, who sings. There's a point when Sammie is playing guitar and singing that the opening narration is repeated, about music having a magic that can summon spirits from both the past and future, and we see such spirits dancing in the joint, with all the other patrons, but it didn't seem to me as if anyone noticed them. It was cool, though. That scene kind of ends with the whole place seeming to burn down, but that didn't really happen. And... lots of stuff goes on that I don't need to get into, but eventually Remmick, Bert, and Joan show up at the joint, offering to play music and spend their money. But they're turned away, largely because they're white. Later, Mary goes after them to determine whether they were good people who could be invited in, and they turn her into a vampire, too. She returns to the joint, and turns Stack into a vampire. Annie's the one who knows all about vampires, and oversees preparations of defenses against them, including garlic and wooden stakes. Eventually, the joint is set upon by a large number of vampires.

There were some rather interesting twists in the nature of the vampires, like Remmick gaining all the knowledge of anyone he turned. And his appeal to the survivors to accept being turned, themselves, as the only way they can truly become free in a society that rejects them because of racism. Eventually most of the vampires are defeated, whether by stakes through the heart or by sunlight at dawn. Sammie goes to his father's church, as the opening scene is repeated. But he ignores his father's wishes, and leaves town to become a blues musician. Meanwhile, the KKK attacks the juke joint, where only Smoke is left. I won't spoil how that turns out.

There's another scene, which I believe was mid-credits, set in 1992. I won't spoil what happens there, either, but it was a really good scene. And there's a briefer, but still entertaining, post-credits scene. And I don't really know what else to tell you. The whole movie is just really great in a lot of ways, even if only half of it (or maybe even less) was actual horror. It works also as a period piece, and a story about family, and about the power of music, and love, and of course about the Black experience, which is as relevant today as it was in the time the movie is set. It's really just phenomenal, and while I wasn't quite sure whether I'd rate it as "kinda loved" or just "quite liked", I ultimately chose the former. And I can completely understand anyone else loving it more than I did, because the movie definitely deserves to be loved a lot.