Sinners

If the racial tensions and socioeconomic strife of the Jim Crow South weren’t repressive enough, Sinners adds vampires to the mix.

This haunting and evocative genre hybrid from director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther) features stylish period re-creation while rooting its supernatural frights in real-world horrors.

It’s a sharply crafted and viscerally propulsive tale of music, religion, sex, dark family secrets, folklore, and evil spirits told with rich cultural specificity and universal resonance.

“You keep dancing with the devil, one day he’s gonna follow you home,” cautions a small-town preacher (Saul Williams) to his adult son, Sammie (Miles Caton), before he sets out in 1932 to find fame and fortune as a blues guitarist.

Sammie latches his ambitions to the entrepreneurial spirit of his troubled twin cousins, nicknamed Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan). They both have checkered pasts, but have teamed up to purchase a barn in the Mississippi Delta that they’ve renovated into a juke joint.

Along with Sammie, the brothers find an opening-night headliner in a downtrodden street musician (Delroy Lindo), recruit a sharecropper (Omar Miller) to be their bouncer, and tab a shopkeeper (Li Jun Li) as the caterer.

The evening draws a huge crowd, including Stack’s ex-flame (Hailey Steinfeld), who hails from a wealthy white family out of state. But outside the feeling is eerie, especially when a stranger (Jack O’Connell) shows up with a strange look in his eye.

Spiraling into a surreal nightmare, it funnels toward a climactic bloodbath during which their sibling bond becomes more of a hindrance than a benefit.

Coogler’s screenplay incisively explores how desperation can shift perspective on greed, power, morality, spirituality, and trust. It’s consistently unsettling, even as the storytelling becomes unfocused, especially as part of a heavy-handed revenge fantasy in the second half.

The sequences inside the jammed nightclub pulsate with rowdy energy thanks to a swirling camera — featuring a handful of bravura tracking shots — and rousing performance numbers.

As the filmmaker’s go-to collaborator, Jordan continues to showcase his versatility with fascinating dual roles that are both distinct and inextricably linked. Stay until the end for a powerful coda with a legendary cameo.

Sinners masterfully combines its disparate elements into a thrilling package — an affectionate tribute to the enduring legacy of blues music, an uneasy reckoning with ghosts of a prejudicial past, and a vampire flick with real bite.

Rated R, 137 minutes.