A Ryan Coogler film can be as much a Michael B. Jordan film as it is a Ryan Coogler film. The endlessly charismatic actor has appeared in all of the director’s movies, pulling double-duty this time as twins Smoke and Stack in his latest smash, Sinners. Jordan plays to his strengths, imbuing hard-nosed characters like Killmonger and Adonis Creed with endearing warmth, and he grants Coogler’s work — no matter the scale — a movie-star shimmer. In the wake of Sinners’s explosive opening weekend, however, all eyes are on the film’s female cast members, who steal just about every scene they’re in even when Coogler’s go-to ringer is present. Consider the introduction of Smoke’s estranged wife Annie, played by fellow Marvel alumna Wunmi Mosaku. Annie is a hoodoo healer living on the outskirts of town, her magic our first real glimpse of something otherworldly long before the vampires creep in. Because of her powers — in protection, hexes, and potions — Sinners grants her real authority: Smoke defers to Annie. The two lost a child, and their mourning is a fixed space between them. Their bitter reunion gives way to the film’s first of a handful of sex scenes, a raw moment of romance infused with not only lust but also loss and longing. Smoke never leaves his brother’s side, but it’s Annie whom he wants in his orbit. That’s true of Sinners itself — though centered on its male leads, the film wouldn’t exist without the influence of women, both onscreen and in real life.
On paper, the female characters in Sinners are foils to their male love interests, but the women operate as independent characters and form their own relationships. While Coogler’s Black Panther films boast big casts with myriad female characters and Creed and Fruitvale station have strong domestic partnerships at their core, we’ve yet to see him pull off a balancing act quite like he does in Sinners — four relationships take center stage amid the supernatural action and social commentary. Not unlike Annie, Stack’s ex-lover Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) feels scorned after being abandoned for seven years in Mississippi while Stack absconded to Chicago for money. What comes to define Smoke and Stack’s redemption is less how they treat each other and more how they rectify their relationships with their past partners who are just as free-wheeling and headstrong. Annie comes to represent that which is magical and divine, while Mary’s temptation sends the night caterwauling into chaos. But due to Coogler’s framing, seeing Mary, a white-passing woman but ostensible outsider, turned into a vampire is tragic. It destroys whatever chance she and Stack may have had together for a future — unless, of course, she can bring him around to her side. Every major female character becomes the deciding force in every relationship in the film: Mary sealing Stack’s fate, Smoke choosing to follow Annie into death, Pearline emboldening Sammie’s desire to fight for his family, and Grace taking out her husband in a literal blaze of glory.
That the women of Sinners have captivated audiences since the opening weekend can no doubt also be credited to how Coogler presents them physically. Sinners marks his third collaboration with costume designer Ruth E. Carter, who became the first Black woman to win the Oscar for her costume design in Black Panther. Audiences have responded to the overt horniness of the film not only because the actors are hot but because the costuming is legitimately sexy: perfectly tailored suits, skin-tight silky gowns, color-coded hats. It’s not an especially sexually graphic film — most of what’s inappropriate has to do with vampires gnawing away on human necks — so the horniness mostly comes from how the film exceeds in craft.
The camera’s adoring gaze is thanks to cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw — the third female cinematographer that Coogler’s worked with across his five feature films. The women go from shining and elegant during the musical sequence to glistening with sweat and blood as the night descends into hell. Durald Arkapaw’s keen eye for intimacy even at such a wide format — she’s the first woman to have shot in 15-perf IMAX 65mm — means we see the circles weighing down Annie’s eyes, the lustful twitch of Mary’s lip, and Grace’s fury when she throws a molotov cocktail out into the carnage.
Coogler named even more women who contributed to his impressive vision in a long, heartfelt thank-you note he shared on Instagram on April 22. He makes it apparent, again and again, his film wouldn’t be what it is without these influences (the unabashedness of Sasha Lane in Arnold’s American Honey, for example, and the economic precarity that pulses through DaCosta’s work).
Sinners’s press tour has reminded everyone how much fun someone talking about a movie can be, whether it’s Steinfeld and Jordan’s flirty banter, Mosaku’s affection for her character, or Jayme Lawson’s hope that she’s making her ancestors proud. There’s a refreshing quality to seeing these performers, especially Steinfeld and Mosaku, who have endured the Marvel and IP economy, get to laugh and joke their way through promoting a project this original and splashy. The chemistry between the cast members is obvious (thank you, fan edits), with the camaraderie transcending the script. The movie is triumphant, but the women are at its core — you can’t take your eyes off them.
