Sinners (2025)

My post previewing Sinners (2025) last week whet my appetite to watch the movie. I ended up watching it twice and spending the bulk of the last several days ruminating on it. It’s an incredibly powerful and moving film that has about 40 layers of symbolism to chew on. On the surface, it’s two things: a period film with great costumes, and a vampire flick. But peer beneath the beautiful and bloody top layer, and you can get lost in the complexity of the storytelling. There’s such a vast array of subtext that I’m honestly kind of intimidated to tackle all of it, which is why I guess I’m grateful that we are a blog about historical costuming in film so at least that makes it relatively easier to dissect.

While, yes, Sinners is a film about vampires—there is plenty of blood to go around—it’s also a film that stresses the importance of race and legacy and dives into the art of seduction and Southern cultural politics. It’s a film that dares to ask, are we ever really free? — “How Ruth E. Carter Resurrected 1930s Southern Style for Sinners,” Harper’s Bazaar, April 2025

One of the things I have come to appreciate about Ruth E. Carter’s costume design in recent years is that she is very interested in the storytelling side of history, whether it’s designing superhero suits for a Marvel film or designing period costumes for an historical epic as she did in Roots (2016). Her designs clearly come from a place rooted in the history, real or imagined, of the characters she’s clothing. In the context of Sinners, Carter says,

“This story connects us to our African past, to our Southern roots, to our culture. That’s what Ryan [Coogler] expressed to all of us: that this was a connection story. […] They say people have a signature, and that’s probably one of the one things that I do constantly on every project. I need realism, I need authenticity. I need to believe it when I see it. So I guess in my mind, if I believe it, it’s giving my touch to the picture, and it may not be as important to someone else to do something in the way that I do it. They’ll do it their way, which is not wrong—it’s just their way.”

Carter tells Harper’s Bazaar,

“I looked at a lot of paintings. I felt like this was an American story, and a lot of old American paintings are very simple in their color palette, so I decided I wanted a very simple color palette that was red, white, and blue. I referenced a lot of photography too. We looked at Eudora Welty, who was a photographer in the 1920s and 1930s. She went through the South, and she captured all of these images of Black families and people just living their lives. I wanted the simplicity of what I saw in those images to transcend into the costumes, but it was very Norman Rockwell—very red, white, and blue.”

I found Carter’s quote interesting from an art criticism standpoint, as both Welty and Rockwell were white artists who used the privilege of their race and their positions as respected artists to peer into the lives of Black people, which often put them at odds with mainstream (i.e., white) America. This loops back into another aspect of Sinners that gave me pause: why was the main vampire Irish? And not just Irish, but a cultural archetype of Irishness that resonated with my own family lore that followed them over from Ireland.

“I’m obsessed with Irish folk music, my kids are obsessed with it, my first name is Irish. I think it’s not known how much crossover there is between African American culture and Irish culture, and how much that stuff is loved in our community.” — Ryan Coogler, Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast

On the topic of perceived whiteness and privilege, one of the main characters is Mary, a 1/4 Black woman who passes for white (played by Hailee Steinfeld, who herself is 1/4 Black and Filipino on her mother’s side). Mary grew up with Smoke and Stack in Clarksdale, but after they moved up to Chicago, she marries a wealthy man (implied to be white). She’s returned to Clarksdale to bury her mother but ends up unburying some unresolved feelings between herself and Stack in the process.

“[Mary] doesn’t even look like she belongs. She’s like a ghost from another planet or another stratosphere, and that was the intention with her look. She’s not a part of the struggle and the strife that is the Mississippi Delta; like Smoke and Stack, she’s made another life for herself. We meet her in this pale, pale, pale color, and she’s wearing the same dress when she goes to the juke, and that was on purpose. I wanted for her to seem ghostly because of what happens to her later on and all of the blood that eventually gets onto the silk. It was very intentional.” — Ruth E. Carter, Harper’s Bazaar.

The contrast between Mary and Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) appears to be almost literally night and day, however it’s Annie that resists being turned into a creature of the night. Carter dressed Annie in deep blues and earth tones, symbolizing the character’s connection to the mysticism of her African ancestry. Annie strives to keep everyone she loves alive through hoodoo, including Smoke with whom she suffered a shared tragedy years earlier. Their romance is the emotional core of the film, as is their authenticity in their culture in the face of overwhelming odds to strip them of their identities.

The third girlfriend in the mix is Pearline (Jayme Lawson), the love interest for Sammie. Her day dress is a neat blue print with fashionable pin-tucking and bloused cap sleeves, paired with a perky straw hat in a coordinating blue.

Another layer in the cultural milieux that Ryan Coogler presents is the presence of a Chinese-American family, the Chows, who are friends of Smoke and Stack going way back before they left for Chicago. It’s inferred that the twins grew up with husband and wife Bo and Grace (played by Yao and Li Jun Li, respectively), which presumes that they were either very young when their families immigrated to the U.S. or they are second-generation Chinese-American. Within this small Mississippi town, the Chows run two successful markets with their teenage daughter Lisa. Grace also paints signs on the side, while Bo practices Chinese medicine. They’re shown to be integral to Smoke and Stack’s plans for their juke joint.

The best scenes of the film are once the juke joint gets hopping. I won’t spoil the magic, you will just have to watch it yourself and get swept away.

On the topic of the background actors, Carter tells Essence,

“One of the rules I had with my team was: when we were fitting background [characters], you couldn’t make alterations. I didn’t want the clothes to fit perfectly. I wanted the pants turned up at the bottom. I wanted things to feel like you’re growing into it. That looks more lived in. It looks more real.”

 

And finally, I really wish we had seen more of the Choctaw vampire hunters! I wonder if there was more filmed about their involvement but was cut from the final edit of the film, because dude. They were so cool!

Also, if you weren’t aware, there’s a Spotify feature that offers background info on all of the characters in the film! As if I couldn’t love this movie any harder.

Have you seen Sinners (2025)? Tell us what you thought in the comments!

 

 

 

 

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