Not Just Another Sin-Fest; The Gospel Hidden in Sinners

NOT JUST ANOTHER SIN-FEST;THE GOSPEL HIDDEN IN SINNERS

Today, I’ll be talking about a movie we all know and love: (drum roll please) Sinners!!! I know this is a tad bit late to be reviewing or talking about this movie seeing as it came out way back in April but I recently watched it so I figured: why not just write about it? 

To all those who haven’t watched it, I’m sure if you haven’t watched it you’ve at least heard of one of the stars of the movie. Our very own representation of a fine shyte melanin-loaded man. If you still need a bit more prompting about who this mysterious fine-ass man is so that you’ll go ahead to google him up and stare at his face, I’ve never been the one to stand in the way of an ogling fan so I’ll just go ahead and say his name outrightly: It’s Michael B. Jordan!!!

Hearing that he starred in this movie was actually my motivation to wanting to start this movie: emphasis on the word wanting. My short-lived desire to watch it sopped with my watching the trailer. Imagine my utmost shock when I saw what started out to be two baddie twins and their cousin doing whatever they were doing in the 1800s suddenly transition into the visuals of vampires. Ummm… hold up. To me, the existence of vampires in a movie equals to the movie being horror which in turn, equals to an immediate barring of any possibility of my watching the movie.

I’m sure the question now is why I watched the movie. My answer is frankly rather basic. Because I wanted to see what the hype was about this movie. So I sucked in all my initial fears of the after-effects of me watching horror, downloaded the movie from a trusty website called Nkiri (those of us that can’t tell our parents to spend money on Netflix understands) and made sure to watch it in broad daylight to prevent any chance of me having a nightmare. Did it work: Absolutely. But it wasn’t due to my expertise of how and when to watch the movie. It was due to the fact that I could tell that the vampires in this movie is actually metaphorical.

How, you may ask? The first time we see the vampire, he approaches a couple asking for their help but he didn’t just ask for their help…he asked whether he could come in. That made me pause a bit. Why didn’t he just enter? I mean…he is a vampire and vampires should have enough strength to push an old lady off. But he didn’t. Right there and then, I realized that the vampire represented sin. For an individual to sin, he or she has to allow the spirit behind the sin into their heart. Sin can’t just come into a random person. It needs permission; it needs the individual to say or think: I really want to do this thing. Therefore, the same way we accept God into our hearts, we can accept sin into our hearts and let the devil run the show.

The second time we see them is when the Stack twins and their cousin, Preacher boy, are having their party. The vampires are attracted to them and try approaching the bouncer to ask for permission to come in but because they were white, they weren’t allowed. I think the reason those vampires were attracted to the music by Preacher boy was based off on how melodious it was as pointed out in the movie. But it isn’t just that. The vampire(the demon) could see what a bright star Preacher boy would become and wanted to turn Preacher boy into one of them. Many secular singers started out as choristers for God but later on, were swept up into the industry and started singing for the devil. 

You may ask how I arrived by that seeing as the song the vampires were singing didn’t mention the devil. What we need to understand is that the devil is old. He is as old as the Earth which means he has enough experience. He isn’t going to be obvious in what he is doing. The lyrics of the song wouldn’t outrightly say “The devil is great!” He knows that wouldn’t work which is why he would disguise the song into a like a package with a colorful bow on it just to attract people and when they’ve accepted it and the song is ruling them, he will show himself as the one behind the song but by then, the person is too far gone.

The vampire knew how to sing simply because before the devil was the devil he was Lucifer, a chorister. He knows how to spin music because he created music. He is music.

Lastly, to address how the vampires were defeated and the epilogue of the story where two vampires approached Sammy or Preacher boy. The vampires were defeated because the one who created them was defeated. Satan created demons who work for him and the only time these demons would stop making all these bad things to happen is after rapture, when God would finally defeat Satan. As for the epilogue, the vampires couldn’t touch Sammy based on the promise Smoke had made to Stack but asked Sammy to sing for them. The way I understood it was that Sammy still entertains the idea of sin but because even demons honor their promises, he was protected.

Overall, Sinners was a generally good watch. What I loved about it most was how it expertly blended serious issues such as the ones I have talked about with the movie. I loved the whole music ensemble and ideas and would recommend it to any movie lover with a theological eye.