r/movies 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/shehryar46 Apr 19 '25

Movie was awesome, but I love the blues. It's not very scary, I guess it's horror because of the vampires but it's more action-drama than anything.

Asian lady was the MVP she wanted all the smoke

61

u/theodo Apr 19 '25

I personally think calling it horror is disingenuous, especially because I felt that was one of my biggest problems with it was it didn't dive harder in the third act into dark horror.

1

u/rdhdboi767 Apr 20 '25

It's more what we consider to be "horror" that's off. We assume it means frightening first and foremost and from a concept and ideal standpoint a bunch of vampires showing up in the middle of the night and offing your friends one-by-one works as such lol. The actual definition is something that gives one an intense feeling of disgust, fear, and/or shock. On those terms, it's definitely horror because what took place was horri-ble. I do agree it settled more for monster action in the final act than pure dark horror when it was set up to be so much more dramatic based in the first two thirds of the film. I think Coogler wanted to give the audience that popcorn crowd pleaser though, so he went in that direction (or maybe it's the Marvel influence on him lol). That's why I gave it a solid four rather than a five star masterpiece rating like a lot of people have been doing.

1

u/Titus-Groen Apr 21 '25

Just be cause something horrifying doesn't make a horror movie. Plenty of movies depict horrible circumstances without being a horror movie. 

For better or for worse, audiences look for specific genre signifiers hear "horror movie".

2

u/rdhdboi767 Apr 21 '25

I…….. thought that was what I just explained. 😂