Sinners is a Michael B. Jordan film written/directed/co-produced by Ryan Coogler.

…What, you’re still here? Why aren’t you going out to see the movie right now? You need more? Okay, fine, let’s take a closer look.

We lay our scene in 1932, at a sleepy little town in the Mississippi Delta. Jordan stars opposite himself in the roles of Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore, a pair of twin brothers who’ve developed quite the accomplished reputation as a couple of cold-blooded gangsters. Helpfully, Smoke wears the blue hat and he’s the resident charmer while Stack wears the red hat and he’s the hot-headed muscle. (At least, I think I have that right.)

Anyway, the Moore Twins made their name up in Chicago before skipping town with a huge cash fortune, several crates of premium imported liquor, and most likely a whole ton of other reasons why they’d be dead if either one comes within a hundred miles of Chicago ever again. With their ill-gotten goods, they take purchase of an abandoned mill with the intention of turning it into a juke joint. This naturally means a huge opening night shindig.

In quick order, the twins recruit our cast of characters.

• Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) is Smoke’s estranged wife and the mother to their deceased infant child. She’s also an expert in… santeria? Voodoo? Forgive me, I’m not exactly clear on the specifics and I don’t know that the film is either. What matters is that she’s an occult expert who comes on to cook for the party.
• “Cornbread” (Omar Benson Miller) is a cotton-picker who gets hired to work as the resident bouncer.
• Bo and Grace Chao (respectively played by the mononymic Yao and Li Jun Li) are a married couple, running the local grocery and providing the necessary supplies.
• Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) is an old alcoholic and a seasoned master at playing blues music.

And then we’ve got Sammie, played by newcomer Miles Caton. He’s a younger cousin of the Moore Twins and son of the local preacher (Jedidiah, played by Saul Williams). While Jedidiah understandably disapproves of the Twins’ criminal careers, the guy is such a hardass that he disapproves of games or music or anything remotely fun. Anything that takes time away from working or praying is inherently a sin, as far as he’s concerned. Too bad for him that Sammie is a prodigious blues musician, with a couple of ne’er-do-well cousins interested in helping him out of a crappy home life.

Further complicating matters, we’ve got the love interests. In addition to the aforementioned Smoke/Annie and Bo/Grace couplings, Sammie gets to chase after Pearline (Jayme Lawson), who may or may not be married already. But of course the name above the title is Hailee Steinfeld, here playing Stack’s old flame. Even better, Mary is a mixed-race woman (one-quarter black, if I have the math right) and she’s got a long family history with the entire community and with the Moore Twins in particular. Obviously, the fact that Mary passes for white while Stack doesn’t is a recurring obstacle between them.

But then of course we have the big fucking problem complicating all of this: The undead.

There’s no point going into details, as the whole thing gets hand-waved away because the filmmakers were smart enough to realize this whole conceit is bullshit and nobody cares about it anyway. The gist is that Sammie is such a divinely gifted musician that his songs are able to call down spirits. Which means that they can also call down demons. As a direct result, there’s an invasion of vampires and we’re off to the races.

…Eighty minutes in. With 40 minutes left in the runtime.

Yes, this movie is undoubtedly a slow burn, and it takes a long time to get to the “zombie horror” action that the film was made and marketed to provide. But there are a number of reasons why it still works. First and foremost because the third act is a harrowing, fast-paced, kickass affair when we finally get to the undead siege.

But far more importantly, there’s a lot more going on here.

To start with, while the supernatural kills are pretty much entirely limited to the third act, the filmmakers waste no time in teasing out the vampire menace all throughout the runtime. My personal favorite example comes partway through, when the vampires come around posing as friendly white musicians with an interest in playing for the juke joint. In context, it serves as a haunting allegory for the white people who have no problem with excluding black people from everything, only to complain when black people start making their own fun in their own spaces and white people get excluded from that.

Yes, this is another film about racial trauma in which the monsters are predominantly white and our audience viewpoint characters are mostly black. (Of course there are exceptions, as the plot unfolds and more black characters get turned.) To be sure, we’ve seen that movie before. But even then, the film is creative and subversive enough to make it fresh.

Remember, this isn’t as straightforward as “monsters are evil and humans are good.” Sure, the vampires are bloodsucking fiends set on killing everyone, but it’s been clearly established that the Moore Brothers are homicidal gangsters. Both sides have blood on their hands, and neither side has any problem using violence as a means to an end, especially when it means looking out for their people.

Hell, it’s right there in the name — even the most innocent background character in this picture is still guilty of drinking, gambling, dancing, rampant sex, etc. As far as the white heteronormative Christian patriarchy (here embodied by a black preacher, funny enough) is concerned, every last character in this entire movie is a barbaric sinner deserving of harsh retribution. Of course, that’s not to say the two sides are equally bad, but this is definitely a case of “bad versus evil.” Though in turn, that raises an interesting question as to where we as a society draw a line between the two, deciding what is and isn’t acceptable or redeemable.

Another crucial factor is the music. The black human characters in this movie all play blues, while the white vampire characters play Irish folk. The styles may be different, but they’re both playing music made to speak for the poor and disenfranchised, particularly among two ethnicities — namely Irish Americans and African Americans — who’ve been subject to horrific discrimination and mistreatment at various times in USA history. In this way, the film makes the point that songs and dancing are part of a long cultural history, and banning such songs and dancing (or declaring them “sinful”) is erasure of that culture and history.

While it’s certainly true that Ryan Coogler writes and directs the hell out of this movie, the true secret weapon here is Coogler’s recurring collaborator Ludwig Goransson, composer and exec-producer of the movie. Goransson even brought along his wife, Serena McKinney Goransson, to serve as a music producer on the film. Put all these talents together — along with spirited performances from Delroy Lindo and Miles Caton — and that’s how we get a spellbinding, mind-blowing musical sequence that weaves together songs and dances and costumes from all over the world and all throughout time. That one sequence alone is worth the price of admission, maybe even enough to get this movie “masterpiece” status.

Michael B. Jordan continues to outperform himself with every Coogler collaboration. Miles Caton is an extraordinary and versatile new talent. Delroy Lindo carries every scene like the character acting champion he is. The entire cast does admirably well at playing a motley crew of likeable characters, exactly what we need for a zombie horror film in which anyone could be next to die and we need a reason to care about who might go next.

And then there’s Hailee Steinfeld. What we’ve got here is an actor who achieved A-list status as a child, but she’s visibly aging out of teenage roles and she’s looking for a way to age artistically into more grown-up fare. It’s a common (but no less risky and potentially hazardous) tactic for actors in this position to take a more sexually charged role, and that’s pretty clearly what Steinfeld is going for with this picture.

Steinfeld was given such prominent hype in the film’s marketing, it’s disappointing that she didn’t get more to do here. The character’s mixed-race background is intriguing, so it’s frustrating that more wasn’t done with it. Steinfeld is a proven talent and a remarkable actor who’s clearly doing the best she can with what she has, so it’s upsetting that the character doesn’t have much agency or motivation beyond jumping Stack’s bones. And yes, the filmmakers are pushing Steinfeld’s sex appeal hard, and the makeout scenes are certainly racy by 1930s standards, but it’s still pretty tame by modern standards.

For a name above the title, you’d expect the actor to do more and go farther than a role that feels like a half-measure. This isn’t even a character, so much as it’s a career transition. Granted, Steinfeld plays such a minor character in terms of plot impact that she doesn’t do a whole lot of damage, but that’s kinda the problem.

Honestly, that pretty well sums up everything that’s great and everything that’s difficult about Sinners: This isn’t the movie the trailers sold to us. I can easily imagine a lot of frustrated moviegoers asking why the female lead is barely in the movie, and why there’s barely any kind of undead violence happening through over half the film. Personally, I would say all of that is more a feature than a bug.

I know it sounds counterintuitive, but the Moore Twins, their internal conflict, and their interactions with the other characters are all compelling enough to keep the film engaging until hell finally breaks loose. More importantly, the buildup develops the themes and characters to such an extent that the vampire mayhem hits so much harder when the third act finally comes. Also, I can respect an “undead siege” movie that packs forty minutes of action and drama into a fast-paced climax, instead of padding it out to feature length like most other films of this genre.

And of course that beautiful music number across time and space goes a long way as well. I’m thrilled to recommend it, but only for those with the patience to sit through a movie much slower and more contemplative than the trailers would have you believe.