American Blues, vampires, hoodoo and a strong passion for the horror genre — filmmaker Ryan Coogler employs all of this in his new Jim Crow-era project, Sinners (Warner Bros). But it’s more than just your run-of-the-mill vampire flick.
With the release of the genre-bending film’s second trailer, Coogler dished at a virtual press conference about its influences, the filming process, and how personal this film is to him among other things.
Here are six things you can expect from Coogler’s first venture into horror so far:
Mysticism and American Blues have Main Character Energy
Vampires are present, yes, but they’re not the main focus and driving force of Coogler’s film. American blues music and other aspects of American Southern mysticism are at its forefront.
“The film deals with American music, blues music,” Coogler noted. “Hoodoo culture, Elegba, you know, all of these concepts and ideas.”
To make the film as tactile and immersive as it is, several consultants were brought in for each aspect of the research process, to capture and accurately portray hoodoo, an ancestral African-American spiritual tradition tracing back to enslavement in the South — which includes individuals connected to the supernatural, like conjure-men and women. Really, the only “make-believe” in the film is the supernatural, a point that Coogler really wanted to make. The film’s composer, Oscar-winning Ludwig Göransson, even spent time at blues-legend B.B. King’s club in Indianola, Mississippi, to get the music right.
Evil Spirits like to Jam too
As a genre with its roots in Mississippi after the end of the Civil War when newly freed African Americans were migrating out of the South, blues music drives Sinners in a way that vampires can only support.
"When we think about the vampire as it exists, it’s got an association and a counterpart in almost every culture,” Coogler said. “It is the supernatural creature that’s most associated with seduction — that’s most associated with choice. You know, in that aspect, it's something that's very present in blues music [which] was often called the devil's music.”
The new trailer depicts a young man who has a passion for playing the guitar and for the blues, but is warned about legends of spirits being conjured from powerful music. A voice narrates, “There are legends of people with the gift of making music so true that it can conjure spirits from the past and the future. This gift can bring fame and fortune, but it also can pierce the veil between life and death.”
Horror is a Community Thing
Sinners is a horror film centered around community, much like Stephen King’s novel Salem’s Lot and the “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank” episode of the cult classic television series The Twilight Zone — two of Coogler’s largest influences for the film. Both stories use their overall community settings as a way for evil and corruption to enter and spread. For example, the childhood community that Salem’s Lot protagonist Ben Mears returns to is found to be infested with vampires. “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank” deals with a grieving community encountering the ressurection of Myrtleback at his own funeral before he starts acting strange. Sinners is similar, as the new trailer showcases impending doom for the music-loving community that is being fostered.
Coogler Takes a Dive into Family Roots
The presence of blues lies not only in the film, but also heavily in Coogler’s personal life — especially in his relationship with his late Uncle James and understanding their ancestral connection to Mississippi, where the film takes place. For Coogler, it was this relationship that planted the seed for this movie.
“My maternal grandfather is from Mississippi,” Coogler said. “And my Uncle James, who passed away while I was finishing up Creed, was also from Mississippi, and it was a place I had never been.”
Sinners has allowed Coogler to dig into his own ancestral background through setting the story in Jim Crow-era Mississippi and having blues music, which means so much to him personally, at the film’s core.
“He was listening to blues music all the time,” Coogler said about his uncle. “He would only talk about Mississippi when he was listening to that.”
No Nightmares for Coogler This Time
Throughout his career as a filmmaker, Coogler has always tackled fears he's had at the time, which he revealed tends to come back to haunt him as nightmares during the filming process. It would make sense if these nightmares plagued him during the making of his first horror film, right?
Coogler never experienced any night sweats or scaries of the sort.
“I didn’t have any nightmares,” Coogler revealed. “I think it was because of the material we were making. Some of it was so intense that the energy was happening there on site.”
Coogler and Michael B. Jordan Give Scorsese-DiCaprio Vibes
Passion for a craft and a good partnership is paramount for a movie to work, and that’s what Coogler found in MBJ.
While their friendship gives them a shorthand on set, it's Jordan's intangibles that truly power this partnership. “He’s got this incredible mix of talent, charisma,” Coogler said. “But then he also is a real craftsman...really cares about the craft and is constantly trying to get better at it and constantly trying to challenge himself.”