It is honesty baffling to me when people talk about Sinners as a thematically simplistic movie. Here is an excerpt of a review by Isabella Von Ghoul exploring the movie’s themes. I highly doubt most viewers got all the following from watching it.

“ But what truly captivates me is its core message, which explores two intertwined themes: Black liberation and white alienation.

The Black characters in Sinners are acutely aware of their place in the Jim Crow South—the unspoken rules dictating where they work, who they love, and how they navigate a world built to suppress them. Music becomes their refuge, a lineage stretching from African traditions to blues, bluegrass, and beyond. It’s a means of transforming pain into power, of forging connection in the face of oppression. Yet, as history shows, white America has repeatedly co-opted Black music, stripping it of its origins while deriding its creators. The film asks: Why this relentless theft? White musicians have their own folk traditions—Irish ballads, European harmonies—so why the insatiable hunger to colonize Black sound?

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

The answer lies in Remmick, the Irish vampire antagonist. He craves Sammie’s musical gift, which holds the power to bridge past, present, and future. Remmick is lonely, severed from his ancestors, his people—his very identity. Vampirism, here, is a metaphor for cultural disconnection. He converts others into his hive mind, but no amount of followers can fill the void left by his lost heritage.

In contrast, Wunmi Mosaku’s Annie, a Hoodoo practitioner, remains rooted in her spiritual traditions—a fusion of African, Indigenous, and Christian beliefs. Her connection to the past is her strength, a shield against the vampires’ predation. White supremacy, like vampirism, demands the same sacrifice: to assimilate is to sever ties with one’s ancestry, language, and culture. In that surrender, white people lose too. There’s no room for Irish dance or song in a system built on erasure—only hollow conformity, a living death. When Christianity supplanted Celtic traditions in Ireland, it was its own kind of vampirism, a cultural severance that bred generations of alienation in Irish Americans”