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Sinners (Coogler 2025)
Marshall Smith, PhD, and Laura Patterson, PhD, offer a sociological discussion of the 2025 film Sinners, written, produced, and directed by R. Coogler.
Sinners is an original film from Ryan Coogler who returns to working with Michael B. Jordan as the acting lead. Sinners is an original film that is a much appreciated entry into the horror genre generally and more specifically black horror cinema. Sinners is an all around brilliant film that manages to be both intellectually robust, hugely entertaining, and exquisitely constructed.
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SPOILERS IN THIS EPISODE
TOPIC INDEX – Sinners (Coogler 2025) (times are approximate)
0:30 – Introductions
3:30 – Film discussion begins without spoilers
3:30 – overall thoughts without spoilers, we strongly recommend viewing the film before listening to our full episode
5:00 – Laura’s hesitation and speculation on a new golden age of horror
11:30 – SPOILERS section begins
12:00 – representation in this specific sub-genre; see Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (Burgin 2019)
14:45 – diving into Sinners
15:30 – evil and music and religion and race
22:30 – music performance sequence
27:00 – white disruption of black spaces
31:00 – role of the vampires
35:00 – negotiated read of the film
37:00 – final scene
39:00 – brainstorming music, religion, and vampirism
1:03:00 – vampirism in this film
1:05:30 – exploitation of black music by white people
1:10:00 – hive mind
1:16:45 – twins
1:18:30 – sin
1:22:30 – Republican slavery denial
1:25:00 – money and capitalism
1:35:00 – grading the film using the Collective Nightmares Evolving Rubric of Social Responsibility
Related Episodes
Cruising (Friedkin 1980)
The Blackening (Story 2022)
Candyman (DaCosta 2021)
Related Films
Blade (Norrington 1998)
Vampire in Brooklyn (Craven 1995)
Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (Burgin 2019)
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“Horror films are our collective nightmares.”
Episode 146
Keywords
sociology, horror, revenge, empathy, siblings, music, good and evil, history, race, civil rights, alcohol, Irish, Choctaw, West African, church, oppression, religion, history, slavery, cultural appropriation, racial integration, cultural relativism, ethnocentrism, melting pot, twins, money, capitalism, plantations, Black horror,