If You Loved Sinners, Here’s What You Need To Watch Next
Sate your appetite.
Sinners is a one-of-one film. It demands your full attention and stays with you long after the credits roll. Ryan Coogler’s latest is technically a horror, but it’s also so much more, keen to splice a lesser-known chapter of history with the schlock and thrills of the supernatural. Coogler juggles a lot of themes here, and Sinners leaves you with a lot to chew on, but it may also leave you wanting more. There’s nothing else quite like it, but if you’re craving more vampires, more history, and more spooky vibes after Sinners, here are three films that may sate your appetite.
From Dusk Till Dawn
This Tarantino-Rodriguez team-up doesn’t take itself too seriously, making it an appropriate cooldown from the intensity of Sinners.
Sinners’ closest point of comparison may be From Dusk Till Dawn, Robert Rodriguez’s campy vampire western starring Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney. From Dusk Till Dawn begins as a crime movie, following Tarantino and Clooney’s bank-robbing brothers as they hide out in a strip club on the Mexican border. As night falls, they discover that the bar’s owners — and most of the strippers, including Salma Hayek’s Santanico Pandemonium — are vampires.
Rodriguez, directing a script by Tarantino, relishes in the chaos of this hell on earth. Their vampires aren’t your typical bloodsuckers: some turn into creatures resembling rats, while others evolve into more demonic forms. Where Sinners is a more straightforward depiction of vampire lore, From Dusk Till Dawn runs away with the genre. It's a lewd, stylish remix that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but that doesn’t make the scares any less potent.
Mississippi Chinese
Coogler’s biggest point of inspiration for Sinners was his personal connection to Southern blues: his late uncle was a blues lover who hailed from Mississippi. But Coogler also found a connection to the region in his father-in-law, whose ancestors were Chinese-American immigrants. The Mississippi Delta was home to a small Chinese community in the Jim Crow era, a fact Coogler learned from Mississippi Chinese, a documentary directed by Dolly Li.
Li served as a cultural consultant for Sinners, helping Coogler bring authenticity to the community he depicts. Her documentary served as inspiration for Grace and Bo (played by Li Jun Li and Yao), the Chinese-American grocers who face the vampire horde alongside Smoke and Stack. It’s a fascinating dive into a culture that rarely gets the spotlight, and Li’s documentary gives us a more thorough look into Coogler’s inspirations.
Eve’s Bayou
Eve’s Bayou is the perfect southern gothic mood piece.
Sinners may be a vampire film, but it’s also rooted in the kind of mysticism that remains misunderstood in mainstream culture. Traditional supernatural themes are enriched with African-American folklore, from Annie’s (Wunmi Mosaku) Hoodoo practices to the ethereal role that music plays in Sammie’s (Miles Caton) life. The film is surprisingly spiritual, and it shares a lot of connective tissue with something like Eve’s Bayou.
The moody gothic thriller, directed by Kasi Lemmons, follows an affluent Creole family in 1960s Louisiana. Jurnee Smollett stars as Eve, a girl who watches her family fall apart at the seams thanks to her father’s (Samuel L. Jackson) chronic infidelity. It reads a bit more like noir than horror, but its spiritual throughline and intimate exploration of Southern life makes it a piece of essential viewing for anyone who appreciated Sinners’ sense of place.
