Ryan Coogler Unpacks the Ferocious Trailer For his Genre-Fluid New Film “Sinners”
We’d like to humbly suggest an early Golden Trailer Award nomination for the official look at Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. Coogler’s latest collaboration with his muse, Michael B. Jordan, is a ferocious “genre-fluid” epic that finds twin brothers (both played by Jordan) returning to their hometown in the Jim Crow-era South to start afresh. Instead, the twins find something truly terrible waiting for them there.
The trailer, at nearly three minutes long, is a relentless rush of lush imagery and period detail that puts Elijah and Elias Smoke (Jordan and Jordan) back in the warm embrace of a town that seems to offer every delight known to man, suffused with music and pleasure and the people they love. That’s when the trouble starts. The most clarifying words in the trailer double as the film’s calling card—”You keep dancing with the devil, and one day he’s gonna follow you home.”
A raucous party at the 1:13 mark is interrupted by a couple of white party crashers who have clearly come looking for trouble. They’re not just looking for trouble; they are trouble incarnate. It’s only twenty seconds later when we see one of them, his face covered in blood, fresh from feeding on someone. Yeah, these appear to be vampires.
At a virtual press conference for the trailer’s launch, Coogler said that although they are indeed vampires in the movie, his period piece goes beyond the gothic bloodsuckers.
“The film is very genre-fluid,” Coogler said. “It switches in and out of a lot of different genres. Yes, vampires are an element, but it’s not the only supernatural element in the movie. The film is about more than just that.”
Coogler said his movie explored the culture and music of the blues, including the way musicians in the film channel magic. Coogler revealed that the film is his most personal to date (his work includes, of course, two Black Panther movies for Marvel and the Creed franchise for Warner Bros.) and allowed him to explore his own ancestral roots in Mississippi.
“It’s a world that my grandparents were a part of,” he said of the setting, “A time that is overlooked in American history.”
This included Coogler talking to his nearly 100-year-old grandmother and paying tribute to his beloved uncle, who passed away while Coolger was in post-production on Creed in 2015.
“I’m blessed to have found this medium that I can work out deep philosophical and existential questions that I may be struggling with while contributing to an art form that means so much to my family,” Coogler said. “Each film brings me closer to understanding myself and the world around me.”
Coogler also said that his friends, the filmmaking twins Logan and Noah Miller, helped him with the movie, including Jordan’s portrayal of the twins Elijah and Elias. Coogler and his cinematographer, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, shot the film on 65mm and got advice from none other than Christopher Nolan and his wife and producing partner Emma Thomas, two of the most experienced large format filmmakers alive. Coogler used a combination of Ultra Panavision and IMAX photography to immerse audiences as deeply as possible in the action.
Coogler’s longtime composer, Ludwig Göransson, is also an executive producer on the film thanks to the influence of his musical expertise on a very music-drenched film. Göransson was on set every day and helped scout the blues trail in Mississippi, which is such a big part of the film’s heart and soul.
The experience Coogler hopes to deliver to audiences is that old-school, unbeatable sensation of having no clue what will happen and being totally, blissfully immersed in what’s happening on the screen. “It’s a love letter to the experience of watching an exhilarating movie in a packed house full of strangers, not knowing what’s going to happen next,” he said. “So many incredible films have given me that feeling, so I wanted to try my hand at giving it back to audiences.”
Sinners hits theaters on April 18.
Featured image: Michael B. Jordan and Robert Perry Bierman in “Sinners.” Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
