Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is being sold as a horror film, but let’s not kid ourselves — it isn’t. Horror is supposed to terrify, to drip with dread, to make you feel unsafe. Sinners never gets there. The vampires are polite, the finale swerves into a Tarantino-style shootout with the KKK, and along the way the script spends more time joking about oral sex than it does building fear. Domestically, it’s a box office hit with nearly $280 million, but overseas it fizzled. Because here’s the truth: Sinners isn’t horror. It’s a gothic-flavored drama that mistakes style and sex talk for scares.
Hollywood After Dark 