Last month, acclaimed director, Ryan Coogler released his latest work, Sinners. Starring Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld & a brilliant ensemble, Sinners is a supernatural thriller centred around the power of music.  

Music takes a strong and spiritual role in Sinners, where in the very beginning, it states how music can bring souls back from the past and future. 

 
The score of Sinners is layered with classic, delta blues, straight from the mouths of the south. A lot of it is completely original, matching perfectly to the themes and settings that are presented to us throughout the movie and that it thanks to acclaimed composer, Ludwig Göransson taking the helm of the score. 

 
Previously working on projects such as Oppenheimer, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever & The Mandalorian series, Göransson masterfully crafts a score full of winding harmonica riffs & sliding guitar strums accompanied with aggressive and passionate chord progressions.  

The movie opens with a journey throughout time, showing the power of music. The musicians who create it are highlighted with a song layered with daunting plucks of a guitar  in front of an ominous note of a violin lurking behind, titled “Filídh, Fire Keepers & Griots” sprinkled with musical variations from Ireland, Africa & Indigenous America.  

 
Tracks such as ‘Smokestack Twins’, ‘(Delta) Slim’s Patch’ & ‘Why You Here/Before The Sun Went Down’ helps introduce us to some of the main characters of the movie and does so brilliantly. It shows that classic delta blues sound but with a powerful and hypnotic production behind it, again, with that slight note of a violin behind symbolising an element of fear & distrust behind a guitar bursting with excitement and even lust.  

 
Despite being centred around the blues, this movie is not afraid to switch up, going in a multi genre approach when needed. At its core, this movie is a celebration of all music. In the heart of the movie, in the midst of an incredible performance by Miles Caton in the barn, music becomes magic in the track titled ‘Magic What We Do (Surreal Montage)’ where the song switches sounds from traditional West African tribes, to the 90s hip hop scene, to East Asian artistry. This scene accompanied by this incredible track is a montage and love letter to the blues and the power of music. 

This movie shows the blues’ antithesis though through the film’s antagonists, the hive mind of vampires lurking in the shadows, enamoured by music. Coogler used traditional Irish folk sound for the vampires, a genre laced in themes of colonial anger, religious guilt and immigration shame which contrasts the themes of freedom in the blues which is presented to us.  

My favourite track from the score titled ‘Bury That Guitar’, can be heard in the climax of the film where iconic drummer, Lars Ulrich of Metallica, forces damning drums throughout a frantic blues melody accompanied by both acoustic and electric instruments. This keeps that blues sound but highlighting a deep terror of something evolved at war with our main characters. 

This movie is a love letter to the blues musicians who came before it. B.B King, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins & Charley Patton. If you love music, Sinners is the movie of 2025 for you. 

Photo Credit: Unsplash