The Real World (And Personal) History That Inspired The Horror Of Ryan Coogler's Sinners

There are sinners, there are saints, and then there's that secret third thing that defies all labels entirely — one that we're apparently supposed to play coy about when it comes to Ryan Coogler's upcoming original thriller, "Sinners." (Spoiler alert: It's vampires.) Starring Michael B. Jordan and, uh, Michael B. Jordan as twin brothers Elijah and Elias Smoke in the Jim Crow-era American South, the film and its marketing have tried to hide the monsters at its heart. That's finally changing with the debut of a brand new and surprisingly lengthy trailer, which went online earlier today. The footage promises one of the year's most exciting experiences, but the main attraction just might be the fact that it's coming from the acclaimed director behind "Black Panther," "Creed," and "Fruitvale Station." Now, Coogler is opening up about the real-world history that influenced the making of the movie.

In a press conference tied to the trailer launch and attended by /Film, Coogler revealed just how personal his vision of "Sinners" turned out to be and how it pulled directly from his own family history. Describing how his grandfather and his uncle were both from Mississippi, a place the Oakland native had never actually been before, he explained how the script unfolded from there. The trailer also places music at the forefront of the action and, as Coogler put it, that came from a similarly intimate place:

"It's very personal. It's interesting, too, because each time I'm blessed enough to make something, it'd been the most personal thing I made to date. And this was no different [...] My maternal grandfather passed before I was born. We grew up in a house that he'd built in Oakland, after he had moved to California, and I was fortunate enough to have a really, really close relationship with my Uncle James. And this movie is about — the seed of it started with that relationship with my uncle. He would listen to blues music all the time, he would only talk about Mississippi when he was listening to that music, and he had a profound effect on my life. I got a chance to dig into my own ancestral history with this film, and it's been truly rewarding."

As much as snobby movie fans like to talk about preserving the big screen experience and encouraging audiences to stop taking photos or videos of the screen (seriously, kids, stop doing that), there's another aspect of moviegoing that we sometimes tend to take for granted: The communal joy of a packed audience all reacting to a crowd-pleaser at the same time. The biggest examples of this can usually be found in recent blockbusters like "Avengers: Endgame" and that barnburner of a portals sequence, but the horror genre has always laid claim to this aspect of moviegoing, as well. "Sinners" writer/director Ryan Coogler is well aware of this, even going so far as to state during the press conference that the film was made for fans to end up laughing, screaming, and straight-up "talking to the screen" as characters go through a gauntlet of threats.

Yet the shared experience of watching "Sinners" together with others goes even deeper than that. Towards the end of the conversation, Coogler went into detail about how the setting and historical background of the period piece were chosen very intentionally — as were the main characters that we end up following along the way. By taking a page out of Christopher Nolan's playbook and hyping up the IMAX component of the film's release, Coogler hoped to fully immerse us in the themes of the story. As he explained:

"The film, for me personally, it was a reclamation of a time period and a place that my family doesn't talk about much because there's a lot of feelings associated with our history. We go there, in [terms of] showing the full humanity [of these characters]. And a big question of it was like, 'Well, our grandparents, they were like us.' It made sense for it all to feel modern and immersive. I thought that IMAX format, as well as the Super Panavision format, and that landscape really puts it in perspective. I think people want to experience something they can fall into."

The headlines for "Sinners" will revolve around the vampire aspect or the two characters played by Michael B. Jordan, but Coogler doesn't want anyone to forget the social commentary at the core of the story, in which racism and discrimination are just terrifying as the monsters themselves. 

"Sinners" comes to theaters on March 7, 2025.