It has been a hot minute since we saw a wholly original movie like Sinners dominate the cultural conversation. But is it such a surprise that one has arrived in this moment? There has been a feeling for a while, not least with the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the wane, that film audiences are hungry for something new. That’s not to say that there isn’t room for a Minecraft Movie doing astonishing business in its own right. But if a brilliant, bizarre genre-feast—a blues musical drawing on a thematic smorgasbord of American racism, Irish folk dancing and, yes, vampires—was ever going to do well, it’s now.
Over this past weekend, Sinners all but matched its opening haul at the domestic box office, dropping a measly six percent week-on-week. To put this into perspective, you’d ordinarily expect a mega-budget, Avengers-grade superhero film to fall more like 50 or 60 percent following its first weekend, which in itself would mark a good performance. What’s more, one box office analyst has gone on record that he expects it to make at least $200 million in the US overall—it’s already at $122.5 million after a week—which would make it the first original live-action film to hit such heights since 2013’s Gravity. Anecdotally, I can’t say I’m surprised. At my various social functions over the weekend, all my friends were talking about was Sinners—even the guys at my Sunday league match who I wouldn’t ordinarily describe as super tapped into film culture. (Hey, not everyone needs to be a Letterboxd nerd nerd.) It certainly seems like movie-going isn’t quite the “outdated concept” that Netflix’s Ted Sarandos thinks it is, given the scale of Sinners‘ success.
But why has word of mouth been so atypically strong for a non-franchise film in a multiplex era dominated by franchises? We should start by pointing at two names: director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan. The former, best known for directing Black Panther (Marvel’s only Best Picture nominee) and Rocky sequel Creed (the likely consensus pick for sports sequel of the century) has form for going over well with ordinary filmgoers; they won A+ and A-grades respectively on CinemaScore, a reliable platform for taking the temperature of audience sentiment. According to Collider, Sinners marks the first R-rated horror film to earn an A-grade, speaking to its outlier appeal. The cliché often goes that critics hate the films that “normal” audiences love, and vice versa, but this has not been the case for Coogler, whose movies score into the high 90s on Rotten Tomatoes.
Not that it’s overly surprising that Coogler’s films are so universally satisfying. First and foremost, they are escapist popcorn flicks that brim with personal expression; he’s one of the only studio directors who is seemingly enabled to work with a creative blank check. His films also tend to be atypically thoughtful for the multiplex.