Director: Ryan Coogler
Release date: 2025
Contains spoilers
Regular readers will hopefully recall that I offered my
first impression of this film following a cinema viewing. Now that it has moved onto physical media I wanted to offer my more considered thoughts. However, on going in, I have to say that this was a film that absolutely captured my attention in the cinema and was a film whose soundtrack I bought as I travelled home that evening. The soundtrack in the film is a key element of not only the setting, and the film’s structure but also the cornerstone of the film’s plot.
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| opening sequence |
That is explained in the opening where we are given information about musicians “
born with the gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death. Conjuring spirits from the past... and the future. In Ancient Ireland, they were called Fili. In Choctaw land, they call them Firekeepers. And in West Africa, they're called griots. This gift can bring healing to their communities but it also attracts evil.” The listing of the three cultures is important as the film is set amongst people of the African diaspora on the Mississippi Delta, has an Irish antagonist and we get a brief appearance of the Choctow.
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| Sammie, worst for wear |
The film’s structure does remind me, to a degree, of
From Dusk Till Dawn, in that it structures as perhaps two halves, with us immersed in a crime facing drama for the first half, which then explodes into a vampire action film in the second half. However, unlike the former this does offer vampire related moments in the first half. The film starts proper with Sammie Moore (Miles Caton) pulling a car up in front of his father’s church. His clothes are ripped and bloodied, he has raw, fresh claw marks across his cheek and he clings to the neck of a broken guitar. In the church his father (Saul Williams) wants him to turn from sin before allowing him the comfort he seeks, he wants him to drop the guitar. In his mind’s eye he sees flashes of the things he has just faced…
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| Smoke and Stack |
The film cuts back 1 day. Sammie is working the cotton fields alone, trying to achieve his quota before the day has started properly. He is leaving as other workers start to appear. One asks where he’ll be playing – he doesn’t answer (he doesn’t yet know). Elsewhere Sammie’s cousins the SmokeStack Twins (both played by Michael B. Jordan) are waiting to do business with Hogwood (David Maldonado,
From Dusk Till Dawn the series). Just returned to the Delta, they were soldiers through the First World War and have been running with gangsters in Chicago. They are looking to buy an old sawmill but there is no love lost – the deal concluded, they warn Hogwood that if the see him or his Klan brothers on their property they’ll shoot them. For his part Hogwood claims the Klan is gone.
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| travelin' |
Sammie has to go to the church to retrieve his guitar (taken there by his father) and it is clear that his father doesn’t approve of his musical choices (style or those he plays for). The twins pick him up, however. They have a truck stowed that is stuffed with Italian wine and Irish beer (it is mentioned later that they have clearly played the Irish gangs and mafia against each other and stolen from both) and plan to turn the sawmill into a juke joint. When they get to the truck there is a moment with a rattlesnake that illustrates how the twins work best as one, but they split up to speed the preparations. Smoke heads with the truck to arrange food and a sign for the joint (and meets his estranged wife and hoodoo practitioner Annie ((Wunmi Mosaku,
Citadel,
Lovecraft Country &
Deadpool & Wolverine)) and Sammie and Stack go to recruit bluesman Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and doorman Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller). This leads to a chance meeting with Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) who was in love with Stack. It is suggested that Stack found her white husband for her as she passes white.
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| Choctaw hunter |
“Vampires?” you may ask, The first look proper is through this sequence when we see Remmick (Jack O'Connell) running under the sun, his flesh charring as he flees Choctaw who are hunting him. He gets to the farmstead and meets a gun aimed at his face and so says that 'Indians' are after him (he also notices the Klan gear neatly folded on a stool inside the homestead). They relent and let him in just before the Choctaw arrive – and invitations are important in this, having to be renewed every visit. The Choctaw arrive and, whether these are vampire hunters in an official sense is unknown, but they certainly know what he is. They beat a retreat as the sun is setting – and this is all we see of them. Rightly so, more would have overburdened the plot but there is a prequel begging to be made of the Choctaw and Remmick. It is interesting that Remmick, who is Irish, and the Choctaw have this antagonism, given the history of the Choctaw people helping the Irish (donating, despite having little themselves, aid during the Irish Potato Famine). When Joan (Lola Kirke), the wife, finds her husband, Bert (Peter Dreimanis), Remmick is covered in blood and he is dead on the floor. Very soon Bert stands up and he is hungry…
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| Lola Kirke as Joan |
The Juke is popping, and Sammie is introduced to play. As the song develops on screen we see a flashback of Delta Slim explaining to Sammie that the blues was not forced on the African Americans, like (Christian) religion was, but that they brought it from home. We also hear a repeat of the opening narration about griots. Figures appear from past and future, playing with Sammie. A DJ is scratching, electric guitars wail as traditional drums pound, all building into his song. Ancestors and those to come, for anyone there (and thus we see some Chinese spirits for instance). It is a stunning and evocative scene, honestly worth the entrance fee to the film in its own right. Unfortunately, Remmick hears the song too and is drawn to the Juke along with Joan and Bert.
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| bloodied |
They aren’t granted entry – due to them being white. Despite presenting as musicians and claiming to believe in equality, the fear of what would happen if a drink was spilled or someone looked too long at Joan causes caution. They do play, to try and gain entry – we discover that the vampires are all connected in a hive mind and so can assume that Remmick has the musical talent and shares it. When their nature is uncovered, Annie compares haints and vampires. A haint is a spirit that possesses a dead body, but vampires have their souls trapped inside and cannot move on. Remmick wants Sammie as he can allow him to see those lost over the years of being a vampire. They turn one core person and use them to try and gain entrance and soon there is a handful of survivors and a whole lot of vampires.
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| vampire in the dawn |
The hive mind leads to another aspect of the film that is very interesting. The vampires singing and dancing in a choreographed way, all stemming from Remmick, which almost gives parts of the film the feel of a musical. The vampires, as mentioned, must be invited in, are very fast and drool when in vamp mode and when hungry. Garlic burns – leading to a scene where the protagonists try and find if one of their number is a vampire, which was an oral variant of the famous scene from The Thing – and sunlight or a stake through the heart kills. Christian iconography does little (we hear Remmick say and take comfort in the Lord’s Prayer) but a mojo bag does hold a vampire off.
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| Michael B. Jordan as the twins |
This is a cracking film, it is incredibly well shot, has a dynamite (and plot central) soundtrack and fantastic acting throughout. Shout out to Michael B. Jordan who, through a brilliant powerhouse performance, imbues the twins with enough personality that we can easily tell them apart. I do have a friend that felt a coda section where the Klan are dealt with was unnecessary to the wider film – but for me, who wouldn’t applaud murderous racists being decisively dealt with. Given the social regression being experienced in the US, the very blunt messaging about the Jim Crow era and the treatment of African Americans was timeous, to say the least. However the film may be set within that era and among that community but it was a nuanced story that will stand the test of time.
9 out of 10.
The imdb page is
here.
On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US
On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK
