SINNERS *UPDATED*

I’ve come to the harsh realization that while Get Out is a movie I still enjoy – it has become more of a curse than anything else. I don’t know what it is but almost any prominent movie or television show to feature Black people dealing with issues concerning race and/or racism has to be analyzed through the lens of Get Out. It’s like a default setting. And the plots to a lot of these movies don’t do anything to shake this perception. Almost everything is some variation of “watch out for those white women” or “beware of the white boogeyman” or “watch out for those outsiders”. There are obviously a few exceptions but when you list everything off you’ll see that I’m right. Lovecraft Country, Them, Ma, Queen & Slim, Run Sweetheart Run, Opus, The Front Room, Tyrell, Master, Alice, Tales From The Hood Part 2, etc. They all have strands of Get Out’s DNA. Recently they put all nuance aside and made a psychological thriller called Karen about a racist white woman that terrorizes a Black couple. There are more cases but I think the 12 examples I just gave from the last five years alone proves my point. If not – perhaps you’re just a contrarian that wants to mindlessly disagree with everything. I’m well aware that movies like Dutchman, Murder In Harlem and Story Of A Three Day Pass existed decades prior. But filmmakers haven't taken from those movies like they've taken from Get Out.

I say all this because even though Sinners falls somewhere between Good/fine/entertaining (I personally found everything non-vampire related to be the most interesting), it still has the stench of "Get Out-sploitation". On one hand, it isn’t Ryan Coogler’s fault that everyone’s critique of this film is some insufferable super personalized think piece about race or the role of Black people in society or the so-called dangers of interracial relationships between Black men & White women (it's always only Black men and white women and never a critique on any other type of interracial relationship). It’s par for the course. Folks put a lot of weight on movies & television shows. For some reason a large sector of Black folks would rather seek validation about their Blackness from a movie or a TV show instead of real life. But at the same time – Coogler has to know that a movie with a predominately Black cast set in 1930’s Mississippi where a group of white vampires terrorize a Black establishment is going to bring on this type of dialogue. Outside of the basic premise which lies somewhere between Night Of The Living Dead and The Thing from Another World, Sinners has all the standard elements & themes I brought up earlier like; “beware of the white boogeyman” and “watch out for those white women”. 

Outside of the basic story about a group of characters trying to survive a vampire coup, Coogler made a genuine effort to touch on everything from the great migration to the history of Black Americans and their African roots. I don’t think everything was a success but I’m still glad I watched it on the big screen. Streaming Sinners at home won’t give you the same experience. I found some of the character’s decisions in the second half of the movie to be very stupid but I’ll give Ryan Coogler the benefit of the doubt on that. Perhaps he wanted to bring back that old school feeling of shouting at the screen when someone makes a stupid decision in a horror movie. I certainly found myself talking to the screen when someone does something dumb. This is clearly a movie that’s more than just a simple vampire movie so there is room for a deeper analysis. But reading through a lot of people’s tweets, tiktoks, letterboxd reviews and social media rants exposed that some folks needs to touch grass, go to therapy or do a combination of both. Good lord. You could argue that I'm giving too much attention to the opinions of people online. But if you think these aren't real life opinions then you're being naive....

*SPOILER* Mary & Stack proceed to stay together for 60+ years and counting but please tell me more about how they weren't together for a long time...

Notice the critique is just about Black men bringing white women into our spaces and nothing about Black women bringing white men into our spaces when the main villain in the film is in fact a white male vampire. God forbid...

 

And if you don’t want to go to therapy – watch more movies.

I’m happy that a filmmaker like Ryan Coogler remains successful but if there’s one thing that Sinners exposed it's that people need to watch more movies. You would have thought this was the first vampire movie ever. And if not Sinners, you would have thought that From Dusk Till Dawn was the first vampire movie to do what it did (…it wasn’t). For those that don't know, many people are saying that Sinners “stole” from From Dusk Till Dawn. 

@thestorytimeguy I love the movie Sinners but... its From Dusk Till Dawn #Sinners #fromdusktilldawn #vampires ♬ original sound - Matthew Torres

To that claim I will reemphasize that people need to watch more movies. From Dusk Till Dawn is a collage movie much like Pulp Fiction. It’s an homage to a handful of pre-existing genres. Last time I checked, the basic premise of Sinners is very similar to Ernest Dickerson’s Demon Knight (a movie released a year before From Dusk Till Dawn), which got it’s basic premise from George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead (Dickerson worked under and learned from Romero before he became a director himself). Again – watch more movies before you decide to step out there and be loud & wrong.

Night Of The Living Dead / Sinners

Night Of The Living Dead /
Sinners

Demon Knight /
Sinners

Outside of Night Of The Living Dead by way of Demon Knight, Sinners also borrows from typical sources like The Shining

   

The Shining /
Sinners

And John Carpenter...

it's actually quite close to THE FACULTY, which is a remake of THE THING, which is one of my favorite movies. Definitely my favorite horror movie. So there's a lot of Carpenter in the film as well - Ryan Coogler

The Thing / Sinners

The Thing / Sinners

During Coogler's recent visit to the criterion closet he also namedropped Michael Mann's Thief as a another source of inspiration. Without spoiling too much - the endings to both films are pretty similar...

Thief / Sinners

Whatever criticisms I may have about Sinners really doesn’t matter. It’s a major success. My words won't sway any box office numbers (to be clear – I think this movie should be seen by as many people as possible). I just thought it would be nice to present a slightly more sane perspective on the movie.

TIMESTALKER

I don’t always mean to force a connection between two unrelated films but there’s no other way for me to praise Alice Lowe’s Timestalker without bringing up Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast. Both movies are darkly comedic time traveling love stories involving stalkers that subconsciously reference the work of David Lynch. 

David Lynch has always been a big inspiration, as well, and you can definitely see the inheritance of that in the film - Alice Lowe, Filmmaker Magazine

Eraserhead / Timestalker

There’s a lot more to both movies but those basic similarities combined with the fact that they were both released within a year of each other makes the comparison more than understandable. It’s like when Cronenberg’s Crash and Lynch’s Lost Highway both got released around the same time. Yeah they’re different but on a surface level, they’re both existential hyper-sexual films that sort of focus on automobile-based eroticism. Or, more recently, Fincher’s The Killer and Linklater’s Hitman. both movies are incredibly different but at the same time, it would be weird to not draw some comparison between two new hitman movies where the protagonists screw up big time and have to correct their errors.

I’ve been a fan/defender of Bonello’s work for more than 20 years but I found his time traveling stalker story to be a bit disappointing. I know I’m in the minority on this. Most folks love The Beast. I just thought it kind of lingered on and took forever to come to an end. I appreciate the audaciousness of it all and the subconscious nods to folks like Leos Carax, David Lynch and Maya Deren. But at the end of the day it just didn’t move me (click here to read my thoughts from 2023).

I hate bringing down one movie to prop up another but Timestalker is what everyone thinks The Beast is.

Lowe has compared her own film to Baby Reindeer. Like Timestalker, Baby Reindeer is another UK-based story about a stalker that takes place over a few different time periods. This pairing makes sense but it’s kind of driving me crazy how more folks aren’t making the connection between The Beast and Timestalker. It’s like when Cronenberg’s eXistenZ came out a few weeks after The Matrix. Again - both movies are different but also very similar. Even today, rarely do you see many parallels drawn between the two movies but they’re both “virtual reality” sci-fi stories where characters use their bodies as ports to log in to another dimension. And they both played in theaters at the same time! 

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t draw a comparison between Timestalker and one of the most famous time traveling movies of all time: Highlander. Lowe has said herself that outside of folks like Lynch, Powell and Pressburger, etc that she was inspired by a lot of pop culture movies from the 80s.

Timestalker is really influenced by eighties films, which had a fun way of dealing with massive ideas. This boy traveling back in time with his mum fancying him, which was a big mainstream hit! The eighties got away with dealing with complex matters in a light way. I miss that we don't really get to explore these fun and fresh ideas, because we don't get those sort of conceptual films anymore - Alice Lowe, themoviewaffler.com

Recently on twitter Lowe said the similarities to Highlander were not intentional but I couldn't resist making a side-by-side. There’s even a duel scene in both films!

Highlander / Timestalker

I've always been really influenced by Powell and Pressburger - Alice Lowe, Filmmaker Magazine

Black Narcissus / Timestalker

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp / Timestalker

A Matter of Life and Death / Timestalker

Tales Of Hoffmann / Timestalker

Normally I don’t like comparing anything to Stanley Kubrick in 2025 because what movie isn’t influenced by him on some level? But Lowe used some of the techniques in Eyes Wide Shut for Prevenge so it isn’t out of line to assume the same techniques were used for Timestalker.

I said to the DoP that I found the thematic use of artificial coloured lights throughout Eyes Wide Shut really creepy, and I wanted to try and get some of that - Alice Lowe, BFI 

Eyes Wide Shut / Timestalker

Timestalker is the story of a perpetually reincarnated woman (“Agnes”) who finds herself falling in love with the same man over and over no matter what time period she finds herself in. It’s easy to read this as a basic female-driven story about finding yourself caught up in a redundant dating loop or falling in love with the same type of men over and over again and having it go nowhere. And that would make sense. I just suspect there’s more. It’s been over 8 years between Pervenge and Timestalker. I can’t help but think this movie is Lowe working through the frustrations of trying getting a film made and be a consistent director. There’s a lot of runaround and disappointment when it comes to getting a film off the ground. Meetings, scraping together budgets & resources, asking favors, etc. At a certain point, low/mid budget filmmaking has to feel like an endless loop much like Agnes finds herself in Timestalker. 

It’s best to go in to Timestalker without any preconceived notions of Lowe’s debut. Prevenge is a personal psychological horror about motherhood. Timestalker can’t really be categorized as easily. On one hand it’s a psychological time traveling period drama. But it’s also a dark comedy science fiction story about a stalker sort of being stalked herself. The same dark humor and quick spurts of violence in Prevenge can be found in Timestalker but that’s about it (and even the violence in Timestalker is more gruesome and over the top than in Prevenge). This is new territory for Lowe that she handles masterfully.

MILK & SERIAL

Found footage horror movies can be insufferable and often times dumb, but every few years or so a new film comes along and manages to do something slightly new within the genre that I like. Nothing groundbreaking or “genre reinventing”. Just fun and entertaining. At this point, a big part of making a watchable/somewhat believable found footage movie is finding a new-yet-logical explanation as to why someone keeps the camera rolling during the chaos. Today, everyone is always filming & posting themselves on all forms of social media so that part of the story is kind of easy to pull off. Someone is streaming and/or going live at any given moment. There’s also an even bigger uptick in youtube/Instagram/tik-tok prank videos which, staged or not, are usually mean-spirited & cruel. And they only get more & more cruel because each prankster wants to outdo and one-up the last person. Everyone wants to go viral. I’m kind of surprised more modern horror films haven’t capitalized on this subject matter instead of all the easter egg/symbol-heavy grief-porn horror films that currently plague the genre. 

I know this sounds preachy on my part but folks are incredibly desensitized and have a warped sense of reality now more than ever. Likes, followers, and going viral are equal currency to some folks. Curry Barker’s Milk & Serial touches on all the mean-spirited online pranks and the desensitization of young people without being too preachy and finger wagging...

A Clockwork Orange / Milk & Serial

This is bound to be compared to the cinema of Quentin Tarantino due to it’s non-linear format, but this reminded me of a really good hour-long Mr Show sketch where the twist has an additional twist (the film centers around a prank inside of a prank that goes too far between a group of friends). Curry Barker is a young cinephile so the usual unavoidable suspects like; Tarantino and a base-level understanding of the violent side of Kubrick are all within the DNA of this movie but it would be unfair to stop there (it also shouldn't even need to be said but Quentin Tarantino didn't invent non-linear storytelling). There’s more to this movie than non-linear storytelling and visual homages to classic cinema. Young creatives aren’t always given the credit they deserve. Older folks like to sometimes underestimate the creativity of younger people because there’s this unwritten rule that anyone younger than you doesn’t know anything. But in my opinion, Milk & Serial is way more mature than you’d expect (especially considering it was made by someone in their early 20s). The music, the tone, the ambiance, everything. This is the kind of film that could be a gateway to stuff like early Haneke. Milk & Serial certainly has the same mean-spiritedness of something like Benny’s Video or Funny Games… 

Benny's Video / Milk & Serial

After a recent re-watch I'm really starting to suspect Barker might be a fan of Haneke's late period stuff as well...

Benny's Video / Milk & Serial

A coincidental callback to possibly the most popular found-footage movie ever...

The Blair Witch Project / Milk & Serial

The final moments are also similar to the final moments of the pre-found footage classic; Man Bites Dog

Man Bites Dog / Milk & Serial

This is an hour-long youtube movie so I completely understand why it didn’t get the same hype as something like Cuckoo, Late Night With The Devil, Longlegs or even In A Violent Nature, but if you’re looking for an alternative to all the disappointing horror films from this year (sorry but almost everything that’s been hyped up this year was a letdown for me personally), Milk & Serial is easy to access.

THE SUBSTANCE

*SPOILERS*

It’s no mystery that this movie was influenced by David Cronenberg. I’ll even go so far as to say the influence is slightly deeper than just surface-level visuals. Most filmmakers that claim to be influenced by Cronenberg have this naive understanding of his movies that’s kind of embarrassing. Much like how a shot of a dark road at night or something “weird” doesn’t automatically equate “Lynchian” or a tense shot of a doorknob slowly turning doesn’t equate “Hitchcockian”, something “gross” or gory doesn’t automatically mean it’s Cronenberg-ian. The Substance straddles the line. On one hand you cant deny the filmmaker’s own words and inspirations:

One of the filmmakers that really impacted me as a teen was David Cronenberg, all those relationships to the flesh and to transforming the body and how that changes how you can be seen, Coralie Fargeat, Film School Rejects

Videodrome / The Substance

Videodrome / The Substance

a movie like THE FLY is a perfect example of this. And movies like eXistenZ, which had a very weird way of dealing with the body, with sexuality and with violence - Coralie Fargeat, Film School Rejects

The Fly / The Substance

The Fly / The Substance

The Fly / The Substance

eXistenZ / The Substance

eXistenZ / The Substance

eXistenZ / The Substance

Cronenberg who opened the door for me to do weirder stuff - Coralie Fargeat, James Whale Blake

Naked Lunch / The Substance

Scanners / The Substance

Shivers / The Substance

Rabid / The Substance

Naked Lunch / The Substance

Shivers / The Substance

Crash / The Substance

And not to contradict what I said earlier but there is an understandable surface-level amount of David Lynch in The Substance as well. I think it’s wrong to label Joseph Merrick as a “monster” (that would mean you completely missed the point of Elephant Man) but the visual similarities are there…

The Elephant Man was a very strong representation of a monstrous figure, especially because the film was based on someone who existed – Coarlie Fargeat, rogerebert.com

Elephant Man / The Substance

Eraserhead / The Substance

Kubrick

The Shining / The Substance

Carpenter

The Thing / The Substance

But at the same time – the comparison is also kind of lazy. David Cronenberg didn’t invent “body horror”. He might be the greatest at conveying it on the big screen but he certainly doesn’t own it. If anything, The Substance should fit in more with films like Freaked, Parents, Society, Tetsuo The Ironman, The Dark Backward, etc. Horror comedies don’t take themselves seriously…

Freaked / The Substance

The Dark Backward / The Substance

Tetsuo The Ironman / The Substance

I can’t stress how much this film really reminded me of Brian Yuzna’s work (Society)…

Society / The Substance

I’d also throw Stuart Gordon’s work in there also. 

From Beyond / The Substance

I guess that’s my only other grip with this movie. The Substance should be a dark horror comedy that doesn’t take itself seriously but unfortunately it does. You don’t need me to tell you what it’s about. Anyone that’s seen the trailer or just read a synopsis knows this is a movie about the ugly side of aging in Hollywood mixed with Jekyll & Hyde. The commentary is so on the nose that it should’ve been a completely silly goofball comedy. The director's vision of America is also very intentionally cartoon-ish. Why not just stay in that pocket for the whole movie? Unfortunately I’m pretty sure the director thinks she’s expressing some new revolutionary message when she isn’t. The packaging and presentation might be new-ish, but the basic tale is as old as time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the movie stars two veteran A-list actors (Demi Moore & Denis Quaid) with quite a bit of real life plastic surgery. This isn’t a judgement towards either of them. You do what you have to do to keep working. It’s just the surgery they’ve had done is very obvious to someone like myself that grew up watching them over the years. Demi Moore is certainly the star of the film and it’s told from a women’s perspective but it would be foolish to not mention Denis Quaid and his obvious plastic surgery.

So much of Demi Moore’s career has revolved around her looks and her age. I really couldn’t imagine anyone else playing the lead in this movie. That’s actually one of the most interesting things about The Substance - before the movie goes off the deep end, the close up shots of all the aging plastic surgery faces comes off just as visceral as the intense body horror elements in the second half.

No matter what criticisms I may have about this film, Coarlie Fargeat still swung for the fences and caught a nice piece of the ball. I have the upmost respect for that. No matter how important this movie thinks it is, it's definitely different from anything else out right now.