One of the most gifted filmmakers of his generation, Ryan Coogler (Creed) has delivered another gold-plated banger with Sinners. It’s a horror film like none other this year: a heady cocktail of folklore, vampire mythology, Jim Crow-era tensions, blues-fuelled partying, bootlegging, sex, hedonism and bloody gore. Lots and lots of it. It’ll make you stomp your feet and rub your neck a little nervously.
Filmed in epic-scaled 65mm IMAX, Sinners takes us to the Mississippi town of Clarksdale in 1932. Here, the locals prepare for a juke joint party thrown by the charismatic pair Smoke and Stack. Then it all goes From Dusk Till Dawn…
What is Sinners about?
Two cash-rich Mississippi exiles – the brusque, businesslike Smoke and his slick, sartorial twin brother Stack (both played by Michael B Jordan) – head back to their hometown after a stint in Chicago working as enforcers for Al Capone. In tow is a truckload of contraband liquor – Irish beer and whisky – finagled from Illinois mob syndicates and big plans to blow it all on a new juke joint outside of town.
As the pair gather party suppliers, hire musicians and spread the word of their blues blowout, a malevolent, immortal presence awaits across the bayou.
Who stars in the movie?
Alongside Jordan is an equally charismatic cast, with Wunmi Mosaku (His House) as Smoke’s long-suffering partner, Clarksdale’s healer and Hoodoo conjurer. ‘Annie is Smoke’s protection, his comforter. She’s his mother, his teacher, his friend and his lover,’ explains Mosaku.
Stack’s significant other is True Grit star Hailee Steinfeld’s Mary, an old flame who has just buried her mother and harbours a grudge against her unreliable ex. Newcomer Miles Caton plays Sammie Moore, a young blues musician enlisted by the twins to play at their club, while The Batman’s Jayme Lawson is Pearline, the woman who catches his eye.
Da 5 Bloods’ Delroy Lindo plays Delta Slim, a legendary local bluesman with a fondness for hooch, who Smoke and Stack recruit to play at the juke joint’s opening. Li Jun Li and Malaysian actor Yao are Grace and Bo Chow, local grocery store owners close to the twins.
Back to Black’s Jack O’Connell is the mysterious, musical Remmick who turns up on the doorstep of two local Klan members (July Talk lead singer Peter Dreimanis and Lola Kirke) and recruits them into his troupe.
Where was Sinners filmed?
Going under the working title ‘Grilled Cheese’, the Sinners production team headed not to Mississippi but neighbouring Louisiana to shoot the movie. Braving temperature in excess of 100° (plus 80 percent humidity), the cast and crew faithfully recreated their pre-World War II Delta town and its nearby new juke joint across a handful of locations 80 or so miles apart across the Southern state.
Donaldsonville, Louisiana
In April 2024, the Gonzales Weekly Citizen reported filming in Donaldsonville on the banks of the Mississippi. The town’s historic Railroad Avenue was transformed into a 1930s street, with the thoroughfare turned into a dirt road, building fronts repainted and ’30s-era cars shipped in for an early scene where Smoke and Stack make their party plans, spread the word and stock up on catfish and other supplies.
Sinners’ construction coordinator Erik Van Haaren was responsible for building more than a dozen small businesses, including the Chow’s grocery store, a gas station, movie theater, barber shop and hotel. ‘This is the first time the director of any film I’ve ever worked on has sent a library of their creative references company-wide,’ says Van Haaren. ‘Ryan shared historic photographs, videos, films, books and his music.’
Just up the (repaved) road from the location in real life, you’ll find The River Road African American Museum, an exhibition memorialising the African-American experience on Mississippi River plantations.
St Bernard Parish, Louisiana
Annie’s house is a key location in the movie’s early stretches. Here, she and Smoke reunite after his time away in Chicago. ‘Ryan wanted [it] to be built under a canopy of oaks from the 1800s,’ says production designer Hannah Beachler (Creed, Black Panther). ‘Having come up in New Orleans in the film industry since 2004, I knew there was a great location where we shot a very small horror movie. It was an old plantation that was cared for by a man named Lou Pomes in St Bernard Parish. When Ryan said “canopy of oaks”, the first thing that popped in my head was Lou’s place.’
Braithwaite, Louisiana
The meat of the movie takes place in Smoke and Stack’s new juke joint: an old warehouse they’ve bought and hastily converted into a blues barrelhouse. Beachler needed a remote spot to build a corrugated metal edifice for the club. ‘We needed a location that was isolated, with the territorial aspects of water and thick with trees to match the film’s tone,’ explains locations manager Elston Howard of the space needed for the key locale.
They found it 80 miles away from Donaldson on a former golf course in the Louisiana city of Braithwaite. The golf, destroyed by flooding during Hurricane Katrina, was overgrown and alive with (not especially friendly) wildlife, explains Howard. ‘The first time I brought Hannah (Beachler) out there, we were navigating four-to-six-feet high ragweeds,’ he says, ‘and I worried that water moccasins and gators were probably nearby.’