- Critics are calling it a career-defining moment for director Ryan Coogler
- It has a Rotten Tomatoes combined rating that matches The Godfather
- Topped of box office on Easter weekend
Ryan Coogler’s new supernatural vampire movie, Sinners, is sinking its teeth into both box office success and critical acclaim.
Set in 1932 in a haunted Mississippi Delta, the film stars Michael B. Jordan – who has appeared in every Coogler film – in a dual role as twin brothers.
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The brothers, Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore, return to their hometown to start again with plans to open a juke joint, only to be confronted by evil forces.
Sinners is Coogler’s first original project, and it’s already being hailed as his best work yet. The two-time Oscar-nominated director – best known for Creed and Marvel’s Black Panther films – is receiving high praise from critics.
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The thriller also topped the box office over Easter weekend, pulling off a surprise upset against the much-hyped A Minecraft Movie. It opened to $45.6 million domestically and topped the box office worldwide.
Sinners has one of the best ever Rotten Tomatoes ratings
As it stands, Sinners has one of the highest combined critic and audience Rotten Tomatoes scores…ever.
It has a 98% Tomatometer score from over 200 critics and a 97% Popcornmeter score from over 5,000 verified users.
It’s reviewed so well that it’s currently tied with the likes of The Godfather – which holds the top spot for the site’s ‘300 best movies of all time’ list – and 2022’s Top Gun Maverick.
In today’s cinema, it’s extremely rare for a film to win over both critics and audiences in such fashion – especially one that’s not part of an existing franchise.
And for a vampire movie to achieve that in 2025 is practically unheard of. Coogler definitely deserves his flowers.
What are the critics saying?
Barely a negative word has been uttered by critics. Praise has been heaped on, with many calling Sinners a career-defining moment for Coogler.
Matt Singer of ScreenCrush wrote “It’s the rare studio production that engages your intellect while it scares you senseless. And after the messy Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, it firmly reestablishes Coogler as one of our finest working Hollywood directors.”
The Hollywood Reporter writer David Rooney labelled the movie a “smart horror, even poetic at times, with much to say about race and spiritual freedom”, while David Ehrlich of Indiewire said it’s “a bloody, muscular, barrelhouse of a vampire movie that throbs like the neck of a blues guitar on fire”.
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman praised its portrayal of the 1930s, commenting, “It’s a richly imagined, vibrantly acted portrait of a Deep South community in the early 1930s. It’s also a wild and bloody throat-ripping blowout – a thriller that pushes the vampire-as-metaphor thing about as far as it can go.”
Elsewhere, Pete Hammond of Deadline, summed it up saying “It is a period vampire movie/blues musical/deep south gangster flick that may remind you at times of Get Out, The Color Purple, The Cotton Club, and just about every Warner Bros. gangster movie of the ’30s which is perfect since Warners is the studio behind it, and it feels like it belongs there. But the fact is, the devilishly entertaining Sinners may have many cinematic inspirations, but no doubt is marching to its own drum.”
Sinners is in theaters now and is rated R. Alongside Jordan, the film also features Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, Li Jun Li, blues legend Buddy Guy, and Delroy Lindo.
