Sinners review and Spoiler’s abound.
The 1980s and early ’90s were a decadent feast for vampire devotees. The Silver Screen erupted with The Hunger, Lost Boys, Interview with a Vampire, Dracula, Dracula: Dead & Loving It. Anne Rice exploded and I read many of her long, long, LONG tomes. It was fun. But even amidst this undead renaissance, a darker, stranger mythos slithered into the shadows—one rooted not in fangs and capes, but in voodoo rites, Faustian bargains, and the sly grin of Old Scratch himself.
Creeping in for the edges was the Voodoo mythos. Crossroads (1986) introduced L_gb_ and Erz_l_e (I left out the vowels in case this attracts bad attention.) but we learn that they were just manifestations of Old Scratch. Same with 1987s Angel Heart. Louis Cyphre was … well, Lucifer. The broader mythos arrived in Science Fiction. William Gibson’s Net Universe had AI taking on the form of Lws. These were powerful entities but they could be bargained with, entreated with. And these I found more interesting. Later, Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles introduced the Voodoo Hougan, Jim Crow and further discussed powerful supernaturals as Lws.
Now we return to an excellent Dark Fantasy period piece, Sinners. Sinners takes place over 24 hours and it is a long, arduous 24 hours to survive until daybreak. Hint, hint. We begin in Clarksdale MS with a young, brutalized Blues player carrying the remains of a beautiful resonator guitar. He is seeking sanctuary in his father’s church and is forced to make a decision; he has come to a crossroads in his life. I became intrigued and I hoped that this was the reason for all those excitement over the film. He appeared to be a young blues man in the mold of Robert Johnson. Are we going to the Crossroads for a deal with the Devil? Soon, we retreat 24 hours to learn and endure with him, the preceding day. The guitar is whole and beautiful. He is well dressed and he meets his well heeled sartorial cousins: Smoke and Stack. Interesting names and I note that those names are sometimes used as euphemisms for powerful entities.
The dream of the three is slowly revealed and the trio slowly builds the group. They are Blues Brothers on a Mission, maybe not from God, but an earthlier goal. The multicultural south is revealed in a manner that is not a simplified Manichaean duality but multifaceted and complex. There aren’t white saviors or even friendly ones. I liked the inclusion of Chinese American merchants. Chinese in the south were migrants at the end of the 19th century and intended by the white oligarchs to replace formerly enslaved African Americans but that plan never succeeded. Multiracial individuals are introduced and we meet a threatening Haint. She’s beautiful, she’s alive, but she serves as a wandering and unruly spirit. Later, she becomes very destructive. Will she become the Antagonist? And “Haint Blue” as I refer to her is introduced. I remember learning of the color and its significance decades ago during my readings on Voodoo after reading Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. But “Haint Blue” takes the form of a living woman, a brujah, gris gris, and medicine woman. Finally, Choctaw are introduced, hunting a being. We see them in their wonderful hybrid cultural costumes, hear their language, and become aware that something is not right, not quite within the constraints of the physical world. These original hunters of those bayou lands contributed to the mythos of those lands and are spirits in their own right.
The earthly plan succeeds, but maybe not to the level that Smoke and Stacks desires. And the music attracts bad attention. And this is where the story could have gone in another, more interesting direction. I think that Hollywood sank their fangs into this project and changed the narrative and weltanschauung. All projects are a compromise and I wonder if studio heads changed the adversaries into something more accessible to the public.
The music at the core of this movie could have driven a more interesting narrative. A different conflict, a different resolution, a different chorus, could have been achieved by conjuring and focusing on Lws, instead of an Eastern Slavic mythos monster. There is an amazing scene where the ancestors and the descendants are united through shared dance and music. Of past and future uniting with a lost and dangerous present. We could have witnessed Lws riding individuals to fight or love or confront. To build or sustain or destroy. Returning to Crossroads, 1986, I love the guitar battle between Gene “:Lightning Boy” and Jack Butler for the soul of Willie. It’s more human, more real, more accessible. But it still has Old Scratch, the devil seeking one soul.
One soul. Just one soul. There was a cute episode of Derry Girls where Sister Michael says “Of course God doesn’t hate you… You’re not interesting enough. I’d say he’d be ambivalent towards you … at best. If he even exists.” And in Good Omens, Crowley notes the craftsmanship of Hastur and Ligur tempting individuals while he redirects the M25 into a symbol of evil and brings down every London area mobile phone network. The idea that Louis Cyphre or Old Skratch would spend their energies on one minor soul in a world of billions is in some ways a conceit. But the day to day machinations of flawed Lws would have made for an interesting, complex, and unexplored story.
Sinners is a wonderful Dark Fantasy, a complex period piece weaving often marginalized narrative into a tapestry, but it appears to have been Hollywood-Californicated into a common horror trope. It’s very good, go “enjoy” it, but it could have been amazing and ground breaking.
