That seduction is on full display in the glimpses we have seen of the film. A teaser over the weekend revealed smiling white faces (including a devilish-looking Jack O’Connell) as they begged to be let into a blues juke joint run by the brothers Elijah and Elias (Jordan, both). This obviously hints at the classic vampire trope of being wary of who you invite in. Meanwhile a gorier scene shown exclusively to the press reveals the downsides of exactly that when one of Elijah’s friends returns and now also is asking for an invitation after going off with those white devils.
The film marks a chance for Coogler, who is on his fifth collaboration in as many films with Jordan, to dive into his influences and inspirations. Horror itself has long interested him, with the director saying, “I think the genre is for the popular consumers of film, but it’s also a genre that comes up when people ask about great pieces of art…. And I think it’s because it feels ancient, the first story told around a fire was probably a horror story.”
And the horror campfire tales of, say, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn seem self-evident on Sinners. Even so, the director points out he is inspired just as much by Rodriguez’s The Faculty, as well as plenty of Coen Brothers with Inside Llewyn Davis and O Brother, Where Art Thou? mentioned specifically (fitting since the latter also features a devil at a crossroads and a hell of a guitar player).
The biggest influences, however, are intriguingly less cinematic than they are spiritually linked: one is among the more darkly amusing episodes of The Twilight Zone, “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank,” a yarn about a Southern man in 1920s Missouri returning from the dead after his own funeral; the other is a 1975 Stephen King novel also about vampires, Salem’s Lot.
“Salem’s Lot is about the town,” Coogler says, “and this movie is about this community.”
Still, Coogler emphasizes the mixture of blues, vampirism, and Mississippi is hitting on a lot more than fictional reference points. In fact, it might very well be the most personal work in Coogler’s oeuvre.
