Sinners

Sinners is the best horror film I have seen in a long time and a certain contender for the best horror in the last 10 years. The film takes the first hour or so to develop its setting and characters making the shift into fully fledged mayhem even more powerful. This is an approach that is not seen enough in the horror genre as most films leave the audience with no real emotional connection to the protagonists. The most obvious theme/plot device in this film is its established relationship between music and the spiritual world. It would have been frighteningly easy to have misrepresented this aspect or the cultures from which the characters draw their musical inspiration from. Fortunately, this film does not suffer from this issue as the cultural inspiration seems to have been treated tastefully and with respect. There were certain aspects of this film that take away from a perfect score however. The issue of what I will call the "disappearing Irish accent" is honestly nitpick-adjecent but technically counts as a plot inconsistency. Certain characters with Southern drawls magically sing with an Irish accent which could be described as the accent of their ancestors singing through them. This falls apart however, when you take into account that Sammie sings in his own voice. Again, not detrimental but immersion breaking at points. The second issue I have with this film is the Klan subplot which can barely be considered a subplot considering how little it is developed. The scene where Smoke ambushes the Klansmen is unnecessary since it doesn't further develop his character and only serves to give him a reason to die. It would have, in my opinion, been better had Smoke died from exhaustion before the Klan arrived and hallucinated killing them in his final moments. Lastly I was slightly disappointed to see the lack of developement of the Native American characters. Their inclusion feels unnecessary as Remmick could have been introduced without them and I feel that it very slightly violated the Chekhov's gun principle. The film shows us that they hunt vampires but they are never seen again for the duration of the film. Overall, this film was a breath of fresh air in what I would have previously considered a stale and tired genre. I highly recommend Sinners to film enthusiasts who haven't already seen it. Yes there are small problems that most would consider to be nitpicks but almost every great film has similar issues. As a result of this, my final rating for Sinners is 4 out of 5 stars. It's a gripping film and certainly not a waste of 2 hours.