Sinners (2025): Critical Approaches to Ryan Coogler’s Groundbreaking Black Vampiric Horror Film

On April 18, 2025, acclaimed director Ryan Coogler released his fifth feature film, Sinners. Set to the backdrop of 1932 Clarksdale, Mississippi in the height of the Jim Crow era, Coogler blends elements of vampire horror, period films, and musicals to construct a narrative steeped in the histories of American Blackness and to critique various structures of power including anti-Black racism, colonialism, and imperialism. Sinners follows emerging bluesman Sammie, also known as “Preacher Boy” (played by Miles Caton and blues singer Buddy Guy), who helps his twin gangster cousins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) open a juke joint. The evening of its opening, Irish vampire Remmick (played by Jack O’Connell), and the recently transformed KKK member Bert (played by Peter Dreimanis) and his wife Joan (played by Lola Kirke), arrive to terrorize the club’s patrons.

Sinners is rich with meaning. Coogler was inspired by his own personal history, including his family’s participation in the Great Migration[1] and his late uncle James, a native Mississippian, who loved blues music. In this way–and similar to its Black horror predecessors–Sinners uses popular genres and a connection to lived experiences to engage discourse and form critical commentary on issues related to race, class, gender, sexuality, and spirituality. Though released only recently, popular and academic audiences are already resonating with the conversations Coogler opens through his genre-blending project. 

The context of the film’s production and release are also worth noting. In its opening weekend, Sinners impressively amassed over $60 million internationally, which makes it the highest grossing original movie since Jordan Peele’s 2019 Black horror film Us.[2] Sinners also marks the first time that a female Director of Photography has been hired to shoot a Hollywood feature film in IMAX format. Furthermore, since the movie’s release in April 2025, popular conversations, TikTok trends, and fan creations related to Sinners have spread across social media. For this reason, contextual analyses of the film are also necessary.

Some questions to consider regarding textual and contextual readings of Sinners are: What are the theoretical implications of Coogler’s take on the Black horror genre?  More pointedly, how does the vampire narrative in Sinners provide a vehicle for discourse on the impact of anti-Black racism, as well as colonialism and imperialism, in historical and contemporary contexts? What tensions, contradictions, and complexities arise from the film’s engagement with issues related to religion and spirituality?  How are various forms of racialized, gendered, sexual, and class violence portrayed in the film, and what are the implications of such portrayals?  Given the central role of sound in the horror film genre, how does Coogler incorporate blues music in a way that speaks to the horror of anti-Blackness?  Furthermore, how are the production and distribution of the film, specifically in reference to IMAX and IMAX-ready theaters, related to broader issues of race, class, gender, and access? And, what are the social implications of the film’s box office success in the current political milieu?  

Potential essay topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Genre (Black horror, vampire, action, musical, period, Southern gothic)
• Forms of anti-Black violence and White supremacy as horror (lynching, Jim Crow segregation, KKK, etc.)
• Religion and spirituality (African cosmologies, Voodooism, Hoodooism, Christianity)
• Racial capitalism (U.S. chattel slavery, sharecropping)
• Mass incarceration
• Gender (Black masculinities, Black Feminism, etc.)
• Sexuality (interracial relationships, queer love/desire, fluidity, etc.)
• Music (blues, Gospel, Negro spirituals, etc.)
• Performance
• Passing and Whiteness
• Afrofuturism and/or Afro-pessimism
• Colonialism and imperialism
• (Im)migration, mobility, and travel
• Blackness and Indigeneity
• Coalition politics
• Production and distribution (IMAX 70mm, cinematography, editing, special effects)
• Reception studies (circulation of reactions on social media such as TikTok, Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, etc., popular culture commentary)

For your submission, please include completed essay, a 150-word abstract, and a 50–100 word biography by the deadline, May 16, 2026. Submissions should conform to The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. See journal guidelines for submission policy details.

https://blackcam.sitehost.iu.edu/call/.

Direct all questions, correspondence, and submissions to the guest editors at SinnersBlackCamera@gmail.com.

[1] Ryan Coogler, “‘Sinners’: Director Ryan Coogler on His Latest Hit, Delta Blues, His Mississippi Roots & Vampires,” interview by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, April 25, 2025, video, 17:39, https://www.democracynow.org/2025/4/25/ryan_coogler_sinners.

[2] Rebecca Rubin, “Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s ‘Sinners’ Takes Box Office Crown With $48 Million,” Variety, April 20, 2025, https://variety.com/2025/film/box-office/sinners-box-office-opening-weekend-strong-michael-b-jordan-ryan-coogler-1236373417/.