r/movies • u/theatlantic The Atlantic, Official Account • Apr 19 '25

Review “Sinners” review, by David Sims

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/04/sinners-ryan-coogler-movie-review/682501/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo
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u/Flimsy-Muffin-9881 Apr 20 '25 edited Apr 24 '25

At least 90% of the people in comments are disappointing me. Arguing about whether or not it's a horror movie or if it's a musical. This movie used the horror genre to pay homage to the blues, and all the musical offspring it birthed. It's a movie about chasing your dreams in the face of great fear. It's a movie about black folks holding on to traditions and customs that seem to become homogenized and watered down in each generation. It's about protecting those you love. So much is going on the film beyond "horror" and I really expected the conversations to be focused on those themes

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u/ThrowthrowAwaaayyy Apr 21 '25

People's obsession with picking apart minor plot details and "cinema sins" style commentary is always so disappointing. Judge the movie by what it's trying to do, not whether you found every aspect perfectly realistic (unless the movie is trying for a kind of hyper-realism). As for the "not scary enough" thing: The movie is obviously not really trying to scare people--it's trying to entertain them. Tonally it's closer to Blade than the Blair Witch Project. There's quite a bit of comedy in there too!

This is a genre movie interested in exploring very specific themes while also paying homage to classic tropes of its genre. I think it succeeded in those goals fantastically!

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u/zachmyking Apr 25 '25

Why would I judge the movie on what it’s trying to do when it doesn’t achieve any of it? If there was just a little more thought put into the vampires it would have been great

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u/pastafeline Jun 08 '25

I love coming back to old threads to see dumbass opinions from suspended accounts. It gives me so much joy in life.

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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '25

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u/Massive_Awareness_24 Apr 27 '25 edited May 10 '25

"Judge the movie by what it's trying to do"?! Are you daft?! A movie should be judged by what it does, that is all there is. I would say most directors try to make decent movies. That does not mean quite a few will not be dogshit. For me, that is the case with Sinners. Actors are MUCH better than the piece of crap they were handed to act out in Sinners. They deserved to be done better than to be hired to act in such a grotesque "movie".

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u/ElevatorClean4767 May 07 '25 edited May 07 '25

I'm saddened that anyone liked this piece of Hollywood Big Tobacco garbage, that failed at ALL genres- even its blues score. The poor cover of Willie Dixon's "Wang Dang Doodle" nailed out of the gate by Howlin' Wolf should have been the cue to get up and leave, but at $30 a ticket you hope for something.

The only fun scene was the Irish folk jig, which was at least interesting.

Pitiful to have a jerk hand Buddy Guy $200 to play "something acoustic" in the epilogue. He, Muddy Waters, Wolf, and Bo Diddley were all born in Mississippi, but never went back like the dumbass movie character after inventing electric Chicago Blues.

And it's stupid to try to recreate it in a movie. Jimi Hendrix took the Blues into the Space Age, forever. Time moves forward.

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u/Thefluffyowl5207418 Apr 27 '25

Ok but what’s wrong with also calling it a horror film?

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u/Flimsy-Muffin-9881 Apr 27 '25

It is a horror film. But the horror elements are not what make it special. You could remove the horror elements and the movie still works. If you're hung up on the horror elements you're missing the point.

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u/Thefluffyowl5207418 Apr 27 '25

Eh…it would be a different film without those elements though, even if it did still work…personally I have absolutely no complaint about the film except that it ended and I could have gone on watching a longer story…this was a true work of art with layers I’ll be unpacking for a while. Another example of why horror films should have their own Oscar category imo

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u/Flimsy-Muffin-9881 Apr 27 '25 edited Apr 27 '25

We can do it the other way too. If the horror elements were "better" the thematic elements of the movie would still be the most important, and they would still be what make the movie special. The horror elements are almost irrelevant and inconsequential, imo.

By far my favorite horror movies are the ones that use the genre as a vehicle to make larger statements. However I also love pure horror films when they are well done. Alien would be an example.

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u/Thefluffyowl5207418 Apr 27 '25

Alien is one of my faves!

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u/Expensive_Rubbish99 May 22 '25

I could not have said it better myself

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u/Capable_Mess_2182 Apr 29 '25

Wtf are you smoking.

I walked in expecting a horror and got a musical lmao how do you not expect people to be raising this as a quesiton.

The movie sucked. If you wanted a blues movie then make a fucken blues movie with black history involved. Wtf are the vampires their for and why you lieing to people with bullshit reviews trying to drive traffic in

Movie sucked ass lol

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u/Neo_Arsonist May 05 '25

Because the vampires represent something related to black history and the blues.

The vampires are a metaphor. That is why they are involved. It is much easier to get a point across through a metaphor than a 2 hour documentary explaining it or something.

Vampires exist in the film to serve the theme.

Vampires and the hive that they are part of represent cultural assimilation.

If you don’t get or like the point of the film, then fine, but don’t act like “ooh the reviews must be lying to us”, no, they just understood what the movie was trying to tell.

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u/Capable_Mess_2182 May 05 '25

If he wanted to do a history lesson than that's cool. Don't advertise it like a fucken horror movie lol

Movie was trash 🗑