As part of promoting the release of the newest trailer for Sinners, writer-director Ryan Coogler chatted with movie influencer Juju “Straw Hat Goofy” Green about the personal and pop cultural inspirations behind his upcoming vampire film.
Sinners – Coogler’s fifth collaboration with actor Michael B. Jordan, who plays dual roles here – follows troubled twin brothers in the 1920s who return to their Mississippi hometown to discover a great evil lurking there. While ostensibly Coogler’s first foray into supernatural horror, the Black Panther filmmaker prefers to think of Sinners as “a very genre-fluid film.”
In his chat with Green, Coogler cited an array of movies as influences on Sinners, including: the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Fargo; the films of John Carpenter (Coogler called The Thing his favorite horror movie); and Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty, which Coogler said Sinners is “actually quite close to.”
But movies weren’t Coogler’s key source of inspiration for Sinners.
“Truthfully, the biggest influences are not in cinema,” Coogler revealed, naming Stephen King’s novel Salem’s Lot as “a massive influence on the film. … Salem’s Lot is about the town. Not to give too much up [but] this movie’s about this community.”
Another key influence for the Creed and Fruitvale Station filmmaker was one particular television classic: “My favorite thing ever made is Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. And my favorite episode of that is an episode called The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank.” (That 1962 episode sees the title character come back to life at his own funeral, which prompts his rural small town neighbors to think he might be possessed.)
But perhaps the greatest influence on Sinners was Coogler’s own family.
“Each time I make something I’ve been blessed to make, it had been the most personal thing that I’ve made up to date. And this was no different,” the filmmaker said, revealing that both his late uncle and his maternal grandfather hailed from Mississippi, the location of his film’s story.
“The seed of it started with that relationship with my uncle. He would listen to blues music all the time. He would only talk about Mississippi when he was listening to that music. He had a profound effect on my life. And I got a chance to dig into my own ancestral history with this film, and it’s been extremely rewarding.”
The blues music that Coogler’s uncle loved is part of the fabric that makes up Sinners. “The film deals with American music, blues music,” Coogler revealed, citing the lore of blues music – such as the myth of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads in the Mississippi Delta – as having a thematic connection to vampirism.
“(The vampire) is the supernatural creature that’s most associated with seduction, that’s most associated with choice. And that aspect is something that’s very present [in Sinners]. Blues music was also called the Devil’s Music,” Coogler said. “And so, the film is in conversation with all of those things.”
Coogler’s longtime collaborator Ludwig Göransson is composing the score for Sinners and also serves as executive producer on the film. Coogler noted that “in some ways it’s the perfect movie for Ludwig,” since Göransson’s father was a guitarist who the director said was obsessed with the Delta blues music of that era.
“We actually did The Blues Trail when we were researching the film and doing some early vocation scouting. And Ludwig and his dad came along,” Coogler recalled. “We went to B.B. King’s Club in Indianola, Mississippi, and played on the stage of his club. It was just heavily researched.”
Sinners opens in North American cinemas on April 18, 2025.
