“You keep dancing with the devil, one day he’s gonna follow you home.”

This is the stern admonishment that Jedidiah Moore, a 1930s black preacher in Clarksdale, Mississippi, gives his son Sammie in the critically acclaimed horror film “Sinners.” It’s a warning leading to a central juncture in choosing a straight and narrow path or traveling down a broad, wide road laden with worldly temptations. Sammie, a musical prodigy with a golden blues voice and tantalizing fingers stringing a resonator guitar, feels that the church is restrictive and suffocates his creative expression in song. He soon faces an evil entity vying to wrest his artistic talents from the depths of his soul.

“Sinners'” director Ryan Coogler places blues music at the center of this Jim Crow terror narrative that is also a thought-provoking social commentary on racism and cultural appropriation that wades into a nefarious supernatural realm. Here, Coogler is stepping a bit into Jordan Peele territory by crafting a horror tale into a social think piece. For example, Peele’s 2017 psychological thriller and comedy “Get Out” aimed to have us deeply reflect on our societal failings that continue to maintain institutionalized racism and mask deceptive political values. His 2019 follow-up, “Us,” offers a chilling assessment of materialistic obsession and obliviousness to poverty and inequality. In “Sinners,” Coogler takes us back to a place and time in the Deep South in which unsettling fear was rooted in the daily lives of black Mississippians, who were at the mercy of unjust de jure segregation laws. Blacks were second-class citizens with no legal protections and little hope of a better future. Sammie labors as a sharecropper and envisions music as his way out of being trapped in a mundane and grueling life of hardship picking cotton.

Up-and-coming star Miles Caton passionately portrays Sammie’s aspirations. You intensely feel his longing for success and his relentless determination not to let his dreams become deferred. Sammie gets the opportunity he has been waiting for when his identical twin cousins, Smoke and Stack, return to Clarksdale after years of being away in Chicago working for notorious gangster Al Capone. Smoke personifies a dangerous, pragmatic outlook on life, only trusting what his physical senses reveal and never hesitating to destroy or maim anyone who gets in his way. Stack is more laid back and charismatic but just as devious. Their cunning personalities are brilliantly depicted by Michael B. Jordan, who captures the subtle differences that make the twins a menacing tandem. Smoke and Stack seek out Sammie to play in the juke joint they open in Clarksdale, while also calling on favors from others in the black community. Smoke makes a request to Chinese American grocers Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo Chow (Yao) to cater the opening night, while also calling upon his former lover, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), to cook. I found Annie’s initial refusal of Smoke’s offer interesting because she tells him his money is cursed. Yet the folk magic and rituals she practices would be condemned by Jedidiah, as Scripture forbids rites associated with divination. Annie ends up being pivotal in the foreboding showdown in the juke joint after Sammie gives a smashing performance that not only wows the crowd but also summons evil spirits in the form of vampires. These vampires, however, represent much more than typical blood-sucking, licentious creatures. They serve as a metaphor for attempts by some in White culture to profit from black musical traditions and exploit them. Coogler uses another intriguing take here in that the lead vampire, Remmick (Jack O’Connell), is Irish, and Irish Americans living in the South during Jim Crow were also negatively stereotyped and discriminated against, even though they were a White ethnic group. At this time, many Irish were trying to assimilate into Anglo-American customs.

Dr. Jessica A. Johnson is a lecturer in the English department at Ohio State University’s Lima campus. Email her at smojc.jj@gmail.com. Follow her on X: @JjSmojc.