sinners

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the dangers of a white savior review/analysis?moviefavblack horror vampiresmusicalslasher spiritualitygood god this is what i neededanother black classicspoilersso many spoilers

review date:

5/3/25

Director:

Ryan Coogler

trigger warnings:

• racism
• gore
• blood
• death
• sex scenes
• mentions of lynchings
• KKK
• religious themes
• systematic racism

I enjoyed this movie a lot! Really liking this era of black vampires and horror media, thank you whoever decided to bring back Candyman . The film takes place in 1932 Mississippi during the Jim Crow era. Michael B. Jordan did amazing playing two characters Smoke & Stack - he portrayed each characters distinct personality clearly. The pacing of the story is great, it's patient when developing the characters which gave me time to learn about each character and why what was going to happen that night mattered. The whole cast is phenomenal, no one felt disposable at all. This is going to be a LONG review. I have so many thoughts about it!

I don't have much else to say without getting into spoiler territory so read on with caution.

remik the white devil / unaware colonizer

We got another White Devil - wooo ! Remik is an Irish immigrant vampire that is summoned to the Juke Joint through Sammie's music and when he sees that Sammie can connect to ancestors and future descendants using his music, he desires to use Sammie's gift for himself. I think Remik is such a good villain especially for representing other threats to the black community outside of racism. I love this choice since typically in black films set in Jim Crow era/slavery era or films with a black cast & a white villain the motivation is always racism in one form or another. However Remik is not racist and often shows his solidarity with other marginalized communities. He even shows genuine empathy towards black peoples struggle to survive in the Jim Crow south. When he first appears he is being chased by Choctaw indigenous people and when asking the couple for help he uses their tribes name which is a sign of respect in that time period.

He is shown to have disdain for racists. He kills/turns a couple after realizing they are in the KKK, and later he even warns Smoke that the local chapter of the KKK plans to come in the morning to kill everyone in the Juke Joint. Since the KKK also targeted Irish immigrants in the 1920s/30s he has a shared experience with the black community of going through systematic violent oppression.

However none of his solidarity & empathy prevents him from causing harm to the people in the Juke Joint. I think he represents a white savior and performative ally who believes his shared experience with violent oppression removes his ability to harm marginalized people himself. He doesn't see his actions as destructive - rather freeing and transformative. He tells them that through vampirism they can essentially escape racism and oppression like he has and others have - using the KKK members he's turned as evidence of such... which I guess means he thinks that because they're vampires they can't be racist Anyways, in the process of trying to get to Sammie he manufactures his own community by destroying Sammie's and literally forcing his way into a safe space built by that black community and after being rejected he destroys what they built in one night, then with his newly manufactured community he celebrates with them by dancing and singing to his traditional music which is soooo ironic because they refused to let him into the Juke Joint because they were celebrating & connecting with their community & culture... now he's turned them and forced them to partake and celebrate his culture that they didn't even want... literally FORCING their assimilation . Remik wants Sammie so he can reconnect with his lost community, but he doesn't realize that in the process of chasing this he is colonizing the black community and leaving them disconnected from their cultural roots. He forces their deaths/transformations and sees it as them being 'saved'. He really gives unaware colonizer.

There's so much more to say about what threats Remik represents to the black community - a colonizer, white savior, performative ally, etc. but I think he also represents how powerful people (specifically in business/industries/politics) want to exploit black talent. Sammie's talent is spiritually connecting with ancestors and people of the future within his community and Remik wants that. Remik tries to offer many things in an effort to get closer - offering his talents by playing music, offering money knowing that they need it, offering freedom from their ongoing oppression and struggles through vampire transformation (Lestat much?), leveraging the two white people he turned who were in the KKK as proof of his allyship, & tempting them with his power by demonstrating how once they are turned into vampires they share memories. When none of this works he resorts to using outright violence and fear tactics. But after turning people from the Juke Joint he uses their memories and connections to hurt the remaining people inside - at one point he uses the memories of a man he turned to crudely speak to his still unturned wife in her native Chinese language. Their knowledge and gifts once in his hands (or mind rather) is used to further harm them while he continues to benefit from his possession of it.

Remik is a tragic and naïve villain. I think he can represent how a lot of white "allies" actually come across (to me at least). This movie uses vampirism to represent an oppressive system that is inherently violent. Remik isn't much different than the KKK other than his motivations. The violence is the same, the terror is the same, only the intentions differ. He harms this black community not because he hates black people, but because they have what he wants. In an attempt to "help" and "save" he hurts and destorys because he's still operating within the system that is vampirism. Remik - even with his solidarity and empathy - is comfortably and proudly existing in an inherently violent system that requires blood and death to survive, so no matter what he does in an effort to assist those harmed by other oppressive systems, he will cause harm. His comfort and desire to bring more people into the system of vampirism is also a constant threat to the communities that he empathizes with. What this system is exactly representing idk - maybe capitalism, maybe whiteness - but so long as he exists within it and even acts to ensure its longevity he will only be a villain to those communities.

I absolutely love Remik as a villain, especially a vampire one! His complexity and genuine motivations are so interesting to explore.

the music

I liked the messaging of how powerful, healing, precious, and desired black music is, which is blues in this case. They show the inspiration for blues by showing Delta Slim remembering how he lost his friend to a lynching, and when he felt those painful emotions he started to hum to a blues tune . Loved that! To later show that Sammie's music is bringing everyone together and acting as a bridge through time for his community emphasizes the healing power in this music. When he performs it in the Juke Joint there's a vision of the walls burning down, showing that there is no one space that is meant to contain this talent. At the end of the movie he chooses his music over the church because music is his freedom. Being restricted to only play within the church and only play for God was a limitation to his abilities he wasn't willing to accept. Also his voice alone is fantastic. Please sing more!

The Rocky Road to Dublin is my favorite song! It slaps and the scene with all of them dancing around Remik is really beautiful and haunting. I see this as Remik believing that he is on "the rocky road to dublin" and celebrating getting one step closer to his destination and reuniting with his people. Ugh so good!!!

Mary & her proximity to whiteness

Mary is such an interesting character to me. I believe in the film she's a black woman who is "white-passing", but I didn't understand that until looking at the Sinners Wikipedia page . I'm still confused if she was actually considered white passing for the time period. I know there were laws that dictated how to determine someone's 'colored' status but I'm not sure what stipulations were in place, so for as far as I know she is a successfully white passing black woman. My main interest in her is how her proximity to whiteness is used as a tool by Remik to easily gain access to the black community in the Juke Joint. Mary through and through is apart of the community, but because of her closeness to whiteness she exists kinda on the fringes of it. When she shows up a the Juke Joint she isn't immediately let in, she's told she's in the wrong place, but once someone that knows her background vouches for her she's let in. She essentially has to prove that she belongs to this community because she doesn't 'display' as apart of it. It's giving "ok you're invited to the cookout now" and "not black enough for the black kids, not white enough for the white kids" which are topics I'm really sick and tired of but the movie doesn't make this obnoxious so I'm ok with it. She tries to use her proximity to whiteness to help Smoke & at large the rest of the community, but that doesn't work. Once she's turned and is fully 'assimilated' to vampirism (which in this case I'm referring to vampirism as whiteness) she no longer cares about the black community. She has left them behind and now aligns herself with the vampires by using the word 'we' and even delights in the thought of killing them all. I think the exact words she says is - we gon' kill you all - At the end of the day she is not to blame for their deaths, but I just think it's interesting that she was the one that was used to get Remik a step in the door and push the rest of the black people out of the safety that was the Juke Joint.

other thoughts

I had the realization after the movie ended that even after the horrors they faced that night, if they survived they would have had to face another horror far removed from the supernatural kind - the KKK. That night was their only night of freedom and for daring to chase it others organized to destroy them. The moment Smoke & Stack bought the sawmill from the racist owner who is in the KKK, they were marked for death. The moment Sammie played his song and the music escaped the Juke Joints walls and made its way to Remik's ears, they were marked for death.

Theres so much more within the messaging and themes in this movie that I'd like to explore so this review may get longer later.