A Guide to Watching <i>Sinners</i>

Following the success of Black Panther and Creed, director Ryan Coogler returns with Sinners, an original vampire thriller. Set in 1930s Mississippi and starring Michael B. Jordan in a dual role, the film unfolds as both a supernatural tale and an exploration of family, tradition, and Black Southern culture.

Sinners, which premieres in theaters today, marks the fifth collaboration between Coogler and Jordan. This time, Jordan plays twin brothers—Smoke and Stack—who return to their hometown hoping to leave their past behind. But what awaits them is even more: a town haunted by vampires and other monsters.

Despite the high-concept premise, Coogler sought to root the film in raw emotion. Inspired by the loss of his uncle James and the family stories he heard growing up, Sinners merges bold, stylized filmmaking with deeply personal history. “For me, the movie started with my relationship with my uncle who is from Mississippi,” Coogler told LeBron James in a conversation for Interview Magazine.

“He was the older male figure in my life... When I was working on Creed in 2015, he passed away. I had already made a film about the Bay with Fruitvale [Station], I was making a movie about Philly, I made a couple of movies about Wakanda, and now I’m coming back home in a different way. I’m looking at the American South, which is, outside of the continent of Africa, where Black people call home.”

Though it tackles themes of Black displacement, resistance, and resilience, Sinners also makes space for humor, tenderness, and lots of blood. “At first I thought Sinners was going to be a small genre film, but [the more] I learned I was like, ‘Oh, this thing has to actually be massive’ for it to feel right, to do it justice,” Coogler told IndieWire.

Sinners is currently only playing in theaters, so you’ll have to experience it on the big screen.

Technically, the film is pretty ambitious. Coogler shot it using ultra-widescreen formats—Ultra Panavision 70 and IMAX 65mm—giving it the immersive scope of a Hollywood epic, with an intimate touch. It’s a format Coogler chose deliberately to honor the theatrical experience. “I want people walking out of the theater and thinking, ‘Man, I had a full meal. They really care about the medium,’” he told LeBron James in Interview.

Coogler also made an 11-minute video with Kodak, which went viral, explaining his filming process in intricate detail.

Get Tickets

Although Warner Bros. has yet to announce an official streaming date for Sinners, the film is expected to hit Max in 2025, given the studio’s streaming partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery. Past Warner Bros. releases, like The Joker and The Color Purple, have also landed on the platform.

This story will be updated.