One Night at the Club
On 'Sinners'
The hype around this film essentially compelled me to take my behind to BAM and sit through a showing. I’ve been actively avoiding the Tweet app because there were spoilers IMMEDIATELY after it’s release. Whenever there’s a flurry of opinion, you’d best believe I’ll be popping into ur lil email to assert mine.
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Brooklyn Academy of Music Rose Cinemas approx. 4:45 PM
The audience at this showing of the film was so ludicrously disruptive, I thought about writing an essay about audiences instead, but I’ll save that for another day and just bitch here for a second:
I came in about a scene late, found a seat and sat down to find the people directly in front of me nonstop talking about nothing and a person 2 rows ahead, far to my left, texting for actually the entire time. Only the most vicious and violent scenes of the film could get person to get their phone directly out of their face, and even then, it would be right back a few seconds later. The glare of that screen will color my entire memory of this first viewing, unfortunately, not that y’all care.
What is the point of paying for a ticket to something you willingly won’t remember?
Anyway, let’s chat:
I went into this film wary, because, for some reason, the most popular things also seem to be the worst, lately. People often read into things that simply aren’t as deep as the viewer wants or needs them to be to maintain their worldview that watching and engaging with mainstream media is what puts us on the pipeline to freedom, Ryan Coogler couldn’t have made this film if he hadn’t made the numbing propaganda potion that is Black Panther. That movie set us back decades, but that’s for another essay.
Things I Enjoyed:
Hoodoo representation. The representation of magic as a community service and a kindness is often shown as holistically as it was here. Annie’s character is written the way a witch should be: powerful, and far from all-knowing, but tenacious. Of course, she’s the smartest person in the film. Witchcraft is a mutable science that adapts to knowledge and earthly circumstance.
Music as sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse, but always a messenger. As an astrologer, I believe music to be ruled by the sign of Gemini. Gemini is heavy trickster energy, you don’t know what you might get when you play with it. Gemini is ruled by Mercury, a god who can travel between and all worlds. In the film, music transcends time and space and, in one of the more prolific scenes of the film, attracts both ancestors and monsters. This is a film that knows spirituality is not as simple as good or bad. There also seems to be a comment here about Black music and Whiteness’ relationship to it. See: Bhad Bhabie posting that “White Lives Matter” pic.
I appreciated the exploration of congregation in this film, whether it be at the juke joint or in a church, the use of groups showcased the pretty-damn-good writing of the film’s characters. This film reminds us of the importance of The Door, something that I’ve found completely forgotten as a party-goer. Thresholds are all we have; we’re constantly moving through them. They need to be protected from malicious and parasitic forces, whether that be vampires, anti-Blackness or straight cis finance bros showing up to Bodyhack. Clubbing has it’s place in our collective sense of freedom. To be in space with others like yourself and share the joy-embodiment of movement and music in that reflection. We have to preserve it, and that means being fucking rude to people that needn’t be there.1
The acting is one of the shinier aspects of this one. This is the best performance I’ve seen from Michael B. Jordan. I honestly forgot that dude was NOT two separate people. Wunmi Mosaku enchants, as usual. Miles Caton absolutely SLAYED and I hope we’ll be seeing more of him soon. Seeing Jack O’Connell on screen was like running into a friend you haven’t seen in a long time. His acting has only grown since I last saw him in Skins, and I commend any U.K. actor that can make a Southern accent believable.
Things I Didn’t:
I just don’t like looking at Michael B. Jordan, I don’t know why
I think the peak scene in the juke joint with all the different representations of past and future ancestors was kinda corny and heavy-handed. Like, this could have been turned into a line or two thrown in somewhere. Theme was great, execution was meh.
Mary, the octaroon character who’s (“mama’s daddy is half Black”) has to be one of the most egregious examples of how neoliberalism has rotted cultural representation, and rid us of any racial sanctity. Can some things simply be saved for those of us that walk through the world with our Blackness preceding us? Although, I will say, framing a white-passing socialite as the key infectant of a Black space is pretty on par.
Some plot holes. If the KKK members were going to come kill the partygoers all along, wouldn’t they have come at night like the vampires did?
Further Analysis
A character analysis that’s missing from the discussion is that of Grace Chow. In the film, she sends her husband out into the new world of vamps to get their car (scary movie logic) because she and her husband “didn’t agree to help them with this” and want to go back to town, get their daughter, and head home. Mind you, all of the other characters (who are Black) are in a back room attempting to save Stack. This is reflective of non-Black colored people’s attitudes toward Black plight and experience. Stay for the pay, ignore the pain2.
In this film the vampires have what one could call a community of the mind. Grace Chow says Remmick has a “bee mind” in the film. As someone who read the entire vampiric theme as a metaphor for anti-Blackness, I see this as a poignant characteristic of Remmick and the legion he forms. People who abide to the code of Whiteness are in community with people they don’t know every day, it’s how they protect and maintain their so-called manifested destiny. It also informs tatics that entities like the CIA use to keep us (the global majority) apart. Disjointed.
Whiteness is a Vampirism. Remmick is offering the surviving partygoers an opportunity out of persecution by turning them, but really, they will become hollowed out and constantly hungry versions of themselves. Whiteness is disease that erases creativity and individualism toward the shared cause of Eugenics and suffering. Again, it is a death cult.
All in all, for a vampire movie, Sinners is pretty solid. I’ve loved horror all of my life, but vampires have simply never been my thing. This film had a pleasant balance of comforting cliches and originality with a good chunk of unsung history. I’ll probably watch it again.
What I Read This Week
Blood Moon Ghazal by Janine Mogannam
Black Girls Don’t Get to Be Depressed by Samantha Irby
don’t take this out of context, silly
This character also overrules the wishes of everyone else she’s with and lets the fucking vampires in???