Okay, okay, I haven’t seen all of the films that are making the rounds during this year’s awards season yet, but I’ve seen quite a few of the top contenders from the IMDb Best Movies of 2025 list. Of the commercially successful films on the list, I still need to see One Battle After Another, F1 (starring Brad Pitt), and Wicked: For Good.
I still feel strongly that Sinners is the top film of 2025. It not only served horror fans a unique setting in the Mississippi Delta instead of New Orleans, but also gave us some new vampire lore to drool over (Irish vamp Remmick FTW!). The film also introduced or further endeared us to the blues and a fresh new voice in Miles Caton. And through that lens, director Ryan Coogler also educated audiences about the horrors of the Jim Crow era.
Why is Sinners the Best?
There are so many personal reasons that I connected with this film as both a horror fan and a person of color with roots from the American South, but at the end of the day, Ryan Coogler’s direction, Michael B. Jordan as the lead playing gangster twins, and an outstanding supporting cast tipped the scales for me.
The technical aspects of the film were also impressive, which the film industry is appreciating this awards season. Coogler’s cinematographer, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, became the first female director of photography to shoot any movie on large format IMAX film. Coogler also used “halo cameras” to film Jordan as twins, among many other techniques he used in this film.
There were also some really cool in-universe newspaper clippings revealing some backstory you can find by clicking through the Sinners Official Playlist on Spotify or by reading Gizmodo’s article. Some of the incidents include the fallout between Irish and Italian gangsters that we learn the Twins are running from in the film, and a mysterious Irish ship that washed ashore in Boston with blood-soaked decks and no one aboard.
Cultural Inclusivity
In this film, we see Native American vampire hunters, the Choctaw Nation, hunt Remmick in the beginning of the film. This short bit of screen time was so popular among fans that they started asking for a spinoff film.
Remmick is an Irish vampire who claims to Smoke that he resonates with African Americans’ suffering in order to get into the juke joint, but due to his vampire nature, it is revealed that he sought to siphon Sammie’s talent. He also leads the new vampires in a rendition of the Irish folktale song, “The Rocky Road to Dublin,” a surprisingly upbeat song and dance sequence.
The Chinese American characters, Grace and Bo, are grocers who serve both the white and Black communities, and long-time friends of the Twins. Grace also joins the fight with the survivors of the vampire attack on the juke joint after her beloved husband is turned.
All of these communities actually coexisted in the Mississippi Delta.
Finally, some people may not have been familiar with the concept of “passing” in the Black community prior to seeing the movie. Mary is technically considered Black in the Jim Crow laws, but because she is white-presenting, Stack believed that it was safer for her to continue passing and to have a white husband. If you’re interested in learning more about miscegenation (intermarriage between racial groups), visit the Americans All history page.
In summary, Sinners ticked many boxes for me. I feel like the more people went down the rabbit hole of lore about this movie, the more they learned about life for people of color (Blacks, Chinese, Native Americans, and Irish folks by way of Remmick) during the Jim Crow South, the real horror for Black Americans. Not only that, but we got some really cool vampire lore out of it. How many genre films can you truly say accomplishes so much while also entertaining fans of horror? Not many.
Gina N. Anderson 