(RNS) — There are horror movies that capture the relationship between race and lived experience, but rarely do they intersect with religion. However, “Sinners,” written and directed by Ryan Coogler, is infused with religious imagery and spiritual language.
Praised by critics, “Sinners” immerses its audience in a twofold battle of supernatural strife and racial tension. In this world, Black people are fighting to survive and build society in the Jim Crow era, and as otherworldly creatures are determined to strip them of their humanity. As the movie’s conflict unfolds, Coogler deftly interrogates the role of religion within this Black community.
Set against the backdrop of 1932 Mississippi, the movie is essentially a vampire story woven into the historical context of the segregated South and the Great Migration. Rather than repeating the well-known historical and literary story of Black exodus from the South for economic opportunities, “Sinners” presents a narrative of Southern homecoming. This narrative is the catalyst through which the audience is introduced to the joys, sorrows and fears that characterize Black life in the Jim Crow South.
Two identical brothers, Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore, both portrayed by Michael B. Jordan, return to the South after serving in World War I and working in the criminal world of Chicago. They return to Mississippi hoping to create a juke joint, a precursor to a nightclub and a space for African Americans to exist beyond the confines of white surveillance.
As they create the juke joint, they employ friends, Black townspeople and a family of Chinese storekeepers to create a sense of communal interest and investment in the project. The juke joint is a metaphor for creating and maintaining a space oriented toward unencumbered Black joy and freedom — existing despite the looming threats of racial violence and normative anti-Black discrimination.
As Smoke and Stack create the juke joint, the audience is introduced to three key themes Coogler employs to frame the issue of religion.
Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers in “Sinners,” set in 1930s Mississippi. (Photo © Warner Bros. Pictures)
First, he addresses the fluidity of the sacred and secular. True to the history of Jim Crow, Coogler brings to the forefront the religious debate over the role and place of secular music — particularly jazz and blues — in the lives of African Americans.
Throughout the film, we are drawn into the inner turmoil of Sammie Moore, portrayed by Miles Caton, the younger cousin of Smoke and Stack, who is hired to perform at the juke joint. Sammie’s father, a stern minister, confronts him about his attraction to secular music, setting up a conflict between the secular and the sacred.
Yet, by the end of the film, Sammie and the audience realize these categories are fluid and intermingled. In the song “I Lied to You,” we hear Sammie’s conflict as he sings:
“I hope you can stand it, stand it all
‘Cause what I’m out here doing, you didn’t preach at all
See, I’m full of the blues, holy water too
I know the truth hurts, so I lie to you …”
Second, the film looks at the intersection of religion and the politics of kinship and belonging. As Coogler explores supernatural horror, the audience is introduced to Remmick, an ancient Irish vampire. He is attracted to the juke joint by the sound of Sammie’s voice and its power to lift the cosmic veil and summon the spirits of ancestors and those yet to be born.
As he attempts to get an invitation into the juke to capture Sammie and devour the other patrons, he makes promises of kinship and speaks of the evils of Jim Crow racial norms. These promises of kinship are akin to the historical promises of colorblind Christianity in America, which demand assimilation in exchange for belonging. Much like the vampiric transformation robs Black characters of their humanity, the rhetoric of colorblind Christianity has historically presented a superficial spiritual unity with African Americans, frequently failing to translate into meaningful social and political solidarity with Black resistance.
This is illustrated in the fight between Remmick and Sammie in the lake outside the juke, which powerfully reflects Sammie’s struggle to preserve his humanity. As he recites the “Our Father” prayer — eerily echoed by Remmick and his minions — the moment reveals how Christianity, once a comfort taught to Remmick by colonial forces, served as a tool of colonialism.
And lastly, the film explores the ideas of protection and afterlife. Beyond Christian imagery, Coogler’s depiction of hoodoo, or African American folk magic, emerges as a faithful and resonant reflection of the lived spiritual traditions of people of African descent.
In his inclusion of hoodoo, Coogler expands the spiritual landscape of the film beyond the Christian context and presents the lived and historical complexity of religious identity in Black America. The character of Annie, a hoodoo practitioner portrayed by Wunmi Mosaku, symbolizes the survival of African spiritual practices, epistemologies and worldviews against the violence of slavery.
Wunmi Mosaku portrays Annie, a hoodoo practitioner, in “Sinners.” (Photo © Warner Bros. Pictures)
Annie’s function as a spiritual mediator invites the audience into a discourse on a Black spiritual understanding of protection, life and death. This is shown in her confrontation with a vampire, her explanation of what a vampire is and her plea to Smoke to kill her if she is bitten so her soul can be reunited with her daughter. These scenes and others position hoodoo’s ancestral frameworks as a lens that views death not as an end but as a transitional state.
As “Sinners” examines the porous boundaries between the sacred and the secular, and the entanglement of religion and Black identity, it offers a profound cultural contribution in this much-needed moment in the U.S. “Sinners” sets a new standard for the horror genre, and begins a new chapter within the history of Black horror films.
(Christopher S. Gurley Jr. is a Ph.D. student in religious studies and a Master of Arts student in American history at Stanford University. He specializes in race/racialization in American religious history, with a focus on African American history and Catholicism. He holds degrees from Tennessee State University, Vanderbilt Divinity School and Yale Divinity School. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)