[This story contains spoilers for Sinners.]

It’s not often that a movie comes out of the gate and instantly feels essential to the art form, filling a void in our culture that many weren’t even aware they were missing. But Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is that film. Sinners is more than a great vampire movie, though that is a feat itself, given how well-mined the subgenre is. It is simply a great movie, a new American classic that can stand among all the others that have earned that label over the decades.

Why? It puts stakes down, so to speak, in the past, present, and future, serving as a transcendental experience with themes that reverberate across time and space and speak to our very relationship with art and culture, and who lays claim to it and why. Coogler reckons with our very notion of freedom and ownership through the lens of horror, music, storytelling and religion — and through his own place as a filmmaker within the studio system.

There’s a larger meta-narrative happening within the context of Sinners as well. Ryan Coogler’s deal with Warner Bros., in which he retains the rights to the film in 25 years, has been the source of much conversation opening weekend, with some insiders calling it dangerous or a potential death knell for studios. And even more insidious was the New York Times’ box office coverage of the movie, which stated, “Mr. Coogler will then own it, despite not paying for it.” The suggestion that Coogler should not own what he creates, but furthermore, is somehow stealing it, is a gross miscalculation, which also ignores that Coogler’s production company, Proximity Media, did invest money into the film.

But I don’t see how anyone, with any understanding of what they just witnessed, can walk away from Sinners thinking that corporations should be able to lay claim to something they did not create, in perpetuity. Such a defense of modern vampirism has its roots, intentional or not, in racism. There’s also the fact that Quentin Tarantino made a similar deal with Sony, in which he gets the rights to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood back in 20 years. That decision was praised by industry insiders, with no sign of danger afoot.

Freedom and ownership. These are the core tenets of America. Arguably, they are the core tenets of human nature. We desire to be free of certain restrictions that inhibit our way of life, our way of expression, and the purpose of the existence we seek for ourselves. But as the old saying goes, freedom isn’t free. Often, freedom and ownership exist in opposition to each other. Freedom is frequently exhibited by what, and, obscenely, who, we own. Or at least believe we own. We’re free from money troubles because we can exhibit that we own this house or that car. We’re free from damnation because we own this form of worship and can mold it to our liking. We’re free from bondage because we own the papers proving it so. But, as another old saying goes, the things you own end up owning you. And what is freedom to some may just be a shinier set of chains for another.

Sinners Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Coogler takes a hard look at faux-freedom in the Mississippi Delta in 1932, only 67 years removed from the official end of slavery in the United States. The majority of Black residents are sharecroppers, picking the same cotton plantations their parents, grandparents, and themselves did in some cases. They have little in the way of material or social value (in terms of what is measured by white society) to show for it. Their houses are sparsely furnished shacks on that same plantation land, and there’s little in the way of upward mobility outside of becoming a preacher or packing up and rolling the dice somewhere else. And within all of that, the Ku Klux Klan is hunting. There’s documented freedom, but that freedom doesn’t feel free, a point Coogler returns to at the end of his film.

Despite this imitation of freedom, Black life still flourishes. In pain and poverty, Black life still flourishes. What is showcased in these early moments of the film strikes a delicate balance that only a filmmaker with a great love of the place and people there could strike. Because while these are not optimal conditions, Coogler doesn’t revel in Black pain or trauma, because even the hardships are part of our story and music. It is a way of life. It is the Blues, and that music is not without joy or entertainment.

At the heart of the film is Sammie (Miles Caton), an aspiring young Blues guitarist whose father, Jedidiah (Saul Williams), believes this path will only lead him to the Devil. In the spirit of the film’s transcendental handling of time, in which past, present and future bleed together, Jedidiah’s warning to Sammie is an allusion to Robert Johnson, a Delta Blues guitarist and singer who was one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century and the first, clock it, first rock star. He died at 27 under mysterious, and still debatable, circumstances, but not before the release of his most famous single, “Me and the Devil Blues.” 

The song and mysterious circumstances of Johnson’s death gave rise to urban legends that Johnson had met the Devil at a crossroads and sold his soul for his musical success. For those who know the song and the legend, it’s hard not to imagine Sammie facing a similar fate, given that when we first meet him, he’s covered in blood, sporting claw marks on his face, and barely able to stand. But this isn’t a fire-and-brimstone movie, and music, such stirring music performed by Caton and composer Ludwig Goransson, won’t damn us. But it can redeem, and as Sammie learns quickly from his twin cousins, the reclamation of sin might be the only way to beat the Devil and taste true freedom, if only for a few hours.

Before the events of the film, twins Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) fought in the trenches of World War I before setting off to Chicago and became prohibition gangsters working for Al Capone. They searched for freedom, not only from their hometown that carried memories of their abusive father, and the horror of war, but also freedom from heartbreak, with both men leaving the loves of their life behind. For Smoke, that’s Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), a hoodoo practitioner and root worker with whom he shared and lost a child. And for Stack, that’s Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), a white woman with Black ancestry, who feels closer to the Black folks she grew up around than the white people she’s married into, making their relationship a danger under the illegality of miscegenation. Smoke and Stack believe that disowning their past and the people who made them will offer a kind of freedom, but they can’t be free of the past. Yet, what they need isn’t to escape from the past, but to contend with it, harmonize with it, and find the ancestral power within it, in a way they aren’t permitted to when surrounded by the watchful eyes of their oppressors.

While America offers a fresh start for some, for Smoke and Stack, it’s only a reminder that their skin color prohibits them from true freedom wherever they go. They find, as Smoke puts it, that Chicago is just another plantation with tall buildings instead of fields. It is such a haunting and accurate sentiment. It was the case then, and in many ways it’s the case now. There’s nothing quite like the experience of traveling the country as a Black person, a country built by our ancestors on slave labor, and still feeling unwelcome, still feeling subject to patrols and abuse made legal with badges and laws.

The country of slave labor and KKK patrols isn’t far removed from the country where Oscar Grant III, the subject of Coogler’s first feature, Fruitvale Station (2013), was shot in the back and murdered by a cop who would only serve an 11-month sentence. In such a country where our lives are so expendable, we have to create something that lasts, a legacy that not only can’t be stolen.

With stolen mob money, Smoke and Stack come back to the Delta to set up a juke joint in an old sawmill that they purchase, unknowingly, from the Grand Wizard of the KKK, who plans to use the juke joint as a slaughterhouse for its occupants before the night takes a different turn. “For us, by us,” Stack says, a meta reference to Daymond John’s apparel line, FUBU, one of the most successful Black businesses in history, that eventually grew too big until its original significance was consumed by other partners and collaborators.

There’s also another layer to the twins’ mob heist, which is that Capone had ties to the U.S. government, fostering a relationship between organized crime and government officials that would increase following World War II. It’s not just that Smoke and Stack stole from the mob, but they also stole, indirectly, from a U.S. government that denied them reparations while helping fund the illegal ventures of white immigrants who later became synonymous with white Americans, as immigration fears shifted exclusively to those without white features.

There is a lack of belonging that is key to the Black American experience, and in Sinners, it’s not just Smoke and Stack’s lens we see that through. The tour we’re taken on through the Mississippi Delta as Smoke, Stack, and Sammie bring together all the people they need to make their juke joint a success, introduces us to others in search of belonging. Annie, Mary, Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) and Pearline (Jayme Lawson) all represent different sides of the Black experience. But Sinners doesn’t limit itself to that, and Coogler, unlike so many white filmmakers who tackle period pieces, isn’t exclusionary to history in the effort to simply focus on one group of individuals or one theme.

The importance of Chinese immigrants to the Mississippi Delta, and their role in both the Black community and in the construction of America, is highlighted by Bo (Yao) and Grace (Li Jun Li), married shop owners whose history and ancestry inform Sammie’s Blues, and who become invaluable allies when the sun goes down. Unconsciously fulfilling the role of griot, Sammie preserves the stories and lives of these people.

What is essential to understanding Sammie’s role in the film, and what separates him from his foil, the centuries-old Irish vampire, Remmick (Jack O’Connell), is that Sammie doesn’t seek to own these stories. He carries them with him, and in the film’s most moving, awe-inspiring sequence, creates music with them, along with his own story, in such a way that it connects with ancestral music and the future of music that Blues inspired – rock, country, funk, pop, and hip-hop. Sammie’s gift is his ability to weave these narratives, the pain, joy, humor, and fierce intelligence into something that connects outsiders in such a way that it makes their belonging undeniable. It’s not the physical space of the juke joint that permits freedom, but what is created inside of it. The sawmill can burn to the ground, as it does in the surreal montage Sammie conjures, but still the music goes on, and the people dance.

Nearly every facet of life in America is punctuated by music. Our parties, grocery shopping, election rallies, and even hold lines are music-oriented. You can’t listen to a contemporary song today and not trace it back to the Blues. It is embedded in our culture, and because of that, so are Black Americans, regardless of the spaces we are denied access to. No matter who ignores us, or refuses to hear our voices, we have your ears. That’s power. That’s what Remmick wants. He doesn’t want to share it, but to consume it.

The decision to make Remmick Irish, rather than a southern-born white American, is an interesting one. Not only can it be seen as a nod to Irish author Bram Stoker, who created the most well-known vampire in history with Dracula, but the Irish were subject to colonization by the British Empire, and their Catholicism was overtaken by Protestantism. And without comparing tragedies, but sins of colonization run parallel the American and British colonization of Africa.

When the Irish immigrated to America due to famine and sickness, they were subject to abuses from American-born whites. As Irish mobs formed amidst the Civil War, many saw Black Americans as threats to their land and prosperity, leading to clashes between the mob and Irish police forces, a conflict highlighted in Leslie M. Harris’ book, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City 1626 -1863. Anti-Irish sentiments continued into the 20th century, but a significant number were able to mobilize, finding jobs in local government and making up large portions of New York City’s police force, which became its own legacy.

Remmick’s desire for belonging and community has ties to past and present. His message of community and fellowship doesn’t sound so far off from what Smoke and Stack are promising within their juke joint, but it is corrupted by Remmick’s insistence on creating a single culture, absorbing the uniqueness of the Black American and Chinese American experience, until it is indistinguishable from white culture.

Some audiences have surmised that Remmick’s desire of Sammie’s gift, so that he may commune with his Irish ancestors, is the result of the inability of Irish, or white culture, to cross those boundaries between the living and the dead. But that’s not the case, and as the opening prologue showcases, the Irish have their own form of griots, the filidh, poets, and oral history keepers who were successors to the druids.

So, it is not an inability to connect with his ancestors or misguided morals. Rather, it is easier for Remmick to steal, to drain life from a culture, homogenize it, and then claim creation rather than work towards building his own path to connection. And because he cannot commune as Sammie did, Remmick is cut off from his past, and despite being formerly oppressed, becomes the oppressor, believing that ownership over something he did not create gives him freedom.

As progressive as major studios often like to seem, many of the same games that were played in 1932 are being played now. Coogler said FUBU, and Hollywood jumped. The legacy of Sinners won’t only be found in the film itself, but in how it was made and kept. There was a time when Black creatives could simply be grateful for the opportunity to make something, but that wasn’t true freedom. True freedom, something that won’t be forgotten, is to make it, own it, and build a legacy from it. Not just for oneself, but the people. Like Blues, it’s a movement.

Sinners is both a triumphant bellow and a Blues song about the American South for and by those who built it, and were simultaneously disenfranchised in it. The sinful acts on display here are a direct result of that disenfranchisement, an effort to reclaim what is still owed, forty acres and a mule, with interest.

Coogler communes with ancestral forces, and as a result, Sinners feels akin to magic. Like any magic show worth its salt, it is spectacular and dazzling, and guarantees a good time. It is a crowd pleaser through and through. but it also dances with the forces of nature in a way that feels powerful and invites an element of danger for those who doubt the alchemy that shifts debt to freedom.

Black Americans may still be searching for the freedom that was promised, but what we built, what we created, the music, the stories, the culture, the monuments, are still owned by and shared among us. And for some white audiences, those who fear potential trend-setters and those who want to place restraints on who can succeed and in which ways, that may be concerning, even if on a subconscious level. But, not to assuage anxieties born of gatekeeping and foolishness, the big takeaway from Sinners for those concerned audiences is that Black Americans don’t own you, we don’t want to. We’ve got our own culture, stories, and music. But we’ve got your ears, which means we’ve got your minds and attention, and with that, you know that so much of what you claim to own was created by others. You can’t escape that kind of Black power.