Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Ryan Coogler’s latest addition to his filmography is baring its fangs at the notion that Black horror films need to rely on the formula of racial trauma to be good. Minor spoilers ahead.
“Sinners,” while being set in the 1930’s South, makes a point to focus on the inner lives of the characters and their reality. That reality may be in the Jim Crow South, but we learn that their joys, triumphs and troubles aren’t tied so completely to their race that it eclipses everything.
“Sinners” is a refresher in the era of Jordan Peele thrillers. Peele in his own right has done great things for Black horror, expanding the possibilities in the genre with “Us,” “Nope” and “Get Out.” Each of those films blended horror, social commentary and black humor in a way that felt groundbreaking for the genre. But the realm of supernatural is one that Peele hasn’t seemed too keen to tap into, mostly basing his works in our reality.
The portrayal of the vampire has been used and interpreted as a symbol for many concepts, such as desire, colonialism and disease. Black vampirism has existed in the margins of horror for years, finding some semblance of notoriety in recent memory with the TV series remake of “Interview with the Vampire.” With “Sinners” making such big waves in its first week of release, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say it could be the way out of obscurity for Black horror and the new dawn of the Black supernatural.
In the hands of Ryan Coogler, vampirism becomes a metaphor for the commoditization of Black bodies and Black culture, and what it means to endure while being erased.
What makes “Sinners” work so well was that it centered Black characters not just as survivors or victims like it would’ve been easy to, but as complex figures with agency, hunger, power and history. The narrative wasn’t necessarily haunted by the dark reality of racism and the tricky nuances of blood quantum and interracial relationships; it just happened to live within it.
Stories like this are what black audiences have been craving. The film felt like a love letter to the Southern Gothic subgenre, paying homage to aspects of Black Southern culture like the Blues and Hoodoo without trivializing or demonizing them.
Black creatives are starting to make their way into these spaces to tell the stories others aren’t. Hopefully with Coogler’s success, more studios will take a chance on genre films that aren’t afraid to be both Black and speculative.