Vampires in the South ain't nothing new. Popular works like Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire and HBO's True Blood set their vampire stories in the South, using these monsters and surrounding narratives to critique Southern histories, fears, and anxieties. With Sinners (2025), Ryan Coogler follows this tradition of utilizing the vampire to explore Southern identity and politics, delivering a poignant and distinctly Black Southern story about family, religion, autonomy, and the blues.

Mobster twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, return to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1932, having fled Chicago with a bag full of cash and a truck full of Irish beer and Italian wine. It's later revealed that they "robbed both sides" of the Chicago Irish-Italian mob conflict. With their looted riches, the twins open a juke joint in Clarksdale's old sawmill, with aspirations of creating a place where they and their community can feel free. "Look at that sky," Stack tells his brother. "It's a mighty fine day to be free, ain't it? Our own juke joint, for us and by us, just like we always wanted."

"Juke joints are never built; rather, they appropriate previous spaces… The malleability of juke joints developed out of the subversive nature of early blues music itself. During slavery, African Americans were not permitted to gather; in some cases, dancing and singing also were not allowed. Despite these constraints, music played an important role in the development of the African American community. As blues music gained popularity in the Jim Crow South, juke joints became safe places for African Americans to gather without white supervision."

— Juke Joints, The Mississippi Encyclopedia

As veterans of World War I (1914–1918), Smoke and Stack have been "all over this world," fighting overseas for the American cause. Upon their return from the war front, Black WWI veterans were not regarded as heroes by white Americans. Instead, they were largely met with deepened racial discrimination and brutality. In 1917, Mississippi Senator James Vardaman warned that "once a Black soldier was allowed to see himself as an American hero, it would be 'but a short step to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected.'"

The return of Black war veterans became a threat to the order of the Jim Crow South, stirring up white angst about what Black "heroes" might demand. Black soldiers represented the possibility of social mobility for Black folks across the South, and the white supremacist social and economic order of the South required Black folks to remain disenfranchised and exploited laborers at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. White Southerners responded with violent lynch mobs targeting Black veterans, while white-owned businesses intentionally shut them out of many employment opportunities. As a result, many Black veterans fled the South, used their military weapons training to fight back against racist mobs, and sometimes turned to organized crime for survival. It's easy for me to imagine a similar backstory for the Smokestack twins and it affords their search for freedom even more weight.

full article