Review: Sinners — A Bloody, Beautiful Sermon in Sound and Shadows

By Julia Press Simmons

Sinners doesn’t ask for your attention—it grabs it by the throat. I walked into the theater expecting drama, maybe even discomfort. I wasn’t expecting to flinch. I wasn’t expecting to feel so much.

Yes, there were jump scares. Yes, there was blood—lots of it. Gore, too. The kind that makes your gut churn and your brain whisper, “look away.” But this wasn’t horror for spectacle’s sake. Sinners uses shock as a scalpel, slicing open societal rot to expose what we often choose not to see.

What truly elevates the production, though, is the music—a genre-bending score that feels both ancient and urgent. Blues roots snake through the performance like a ghost in the floorboards, tangled up with the raw energy of hip hop tracks, the rebellion of rock, and the emotional pull of pop. And then, just when you think you’ve found the rhythm, the vampires enter, singing folk tunes that sound like confessions passed down through centuries. It’s unsettling, beautiful, and—somehow—completely cohesive.

At the heart of it all is Michael B. Jordan, delivering a stunning dual performance as twin brothers Smoke and Stack. With uncanny precision, he flips between menace and vulnerability, embodying two men shaped by the same wounds but walking radically different paths. His presence is electric, and his range is on full display—sometimes within the same breath. It’s a masterclass in contrast and nuance, grounding the production’s surreal twists in something deeply human.

The narrative’s message is potent: it’s about sin, sure, but also silence. About what happens when justice hides behind ritual, and when the righteous become indistinguishable from the damned. Yet amid the horror, there’s heartbreak there’s poetry. Sinners is terrifying, yes—but only because it holds up a mirror. And when the house lights finally came back on, I noticed I wasn’t the only one sitting still, stunned. It wasn’t fear that gripped us in that moment. It was recognition.

WANT MORE BLOOD?

Erick S. Gray’s New Novel Turns a Slave’s Tragedy into a Supernatural Odyssey—And He’s Eyeing the Screen Next

By the Editorial Staff of Intellectual Ink Magazine

Some stories demand more than just a page—they deserve a screen. That’s the dream for Erick S. Gray, longtime Intellectual Ink contributor and bestselling author, whose latest novel Solomon Dark is already making waves as the kind of story that could dominate both bookshelves and big screens. Read More From Chains to Fangs: Solomon Dark Sinks Its Teeth into Horror History – INTELLECTUAL INK