July 14, 2025: AmericanStudying Sinners: Coogler’s Career

[A couple months back, my wife and I were blown away by one of the best films either of us has seen in a long while: Ryan Coogler’s stunning Sinners. I hope you’ve all had a chance to check it out already, and if not, that you’ll do so right now and then come back to read this weeklong series of posts inspired by different layers to this phenomenal work!]

On how Coogler’s prior (great) films foreshadowed this masterpiece.

Back in March 2018, I ended a weeklong series on Black Panther (2018) with a special weekend post on Coogler’s film career up to that excellent superhero film. I’ll be following up and expanding on those thoughts in my next two paragraphs, so would ask you to check out that prior post if you would and then come on back for more CooglerStudying.

Welcome back! One of the most clear throughlines in Coogler’s career has been his ability to make genre films that are also much, much more, and that’s definitely true of the ways Sinners is and is not a vampire horror flick. One of the most impressive aspects of Black Panther, for example, is that its villain, Michael B. Jordan’s Erik Killmonger, is as multilayered and nuanced and even sympathetic as its comic book hero. It took some extended conversation after our viewing for my wife and I to get to this point, and then I read Outlaw Vern’s phenomenal review where he expounded on the perspective even further, but I would now say that the villainous head vampire Remmick in Sinners is an equally complex and even in some ways sympathetic bad guy, and at the very least that he has as much of a case as Killmonger did, both about his own past/heritage and about the world he’s trying to create (if, in both cases, through way more violent means than would be ideal). At the very least, both Black Panther and Sinners feature antagonists who directly and consistently threaten our heroes and yet aren’t easily hated and certainly can’t be dismissed, which is quite the genre achievement.

Another throughline, and one I discussed a good bit in that prior post as well, is Coogler’s ability to create wonderful, multilayered female characters within largely male-centered genres and stories (whether superhero films or boxing/sports movies or even the gritty realism of Fruitvale Station). And despite those excellent prior characters, I think it’s very safe to say that a Coogler film has never featured a more stunning female character than Wonmi Mosaku’s Annie. I’ll be talking more about layers of her character and role in the film in tomorrow’s post, so here I’ll just say that in a film featuring not one but two Michael B. Jordan performances, a Hailee Steinfeld performance, a Delroy Lindo performance, and a deservedly-acclaimed performance from the young musician Miles Caton, it’s Mosaku who is the film’s beating heart. Sounds like a Ryan Coogler joint to me!

Next SinnersStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?