In an era filled with genre replications and aesthetic fatigue, The Sinner is undoubtedly a work of great experimentation and political sharpness. It wears the cloak of a vampire genre film but delves its narrative into the dark underbelly of African American history. Elements such as blues music, religion, racial identity, cultural assimilation, and gender symbols are woven into a multi-dimensional context concerning "religion and freedom," "race and rights," and "division and assimilation." Its true edge does not lie in its genre "novelty" but in how it uses the vampire myth as a framework to incorporate the historical realities of African American culture being enslaved, plundered, and forgotten, ultimately posing the question: When assimilation becomes the price of survival, can we still retain our souls?
▪️Five African American History: From Blues to the KKK
The Sinner does not rush to inform the audience of its historical context through dialogue but lays out a profound trajectory of African American history through imagery and music:
Blues: As a culture ,it is embedded in the structure of the entire film. Originating from the laments of Black slaves and sharecroppers in the cotton fields of the South, it was originally a chant of suffering, resistance, and soul. However, with the commercial intervention of white record companies, the blues gradually became reduced to a form of "entertainment."
Cotton Economy: Black slaves in the South worked year-round without pay or rest, were forbidden to read or write, and could only survive by doing physical labor; white workers in the North, even working twelve hours a day, could receive wages.
Racial Segregation System: It was divided by space. Take buses, for example, public buses were divided into "white sections" and "Black sections"; Black people had to sit in the back, with the front rows reserved exclusively for white people; even if the bus was empty, as long as a white person got on, Black people might be forced to give up their seats or stand. The same happened in schools, carriages, toilets, and other public places.
Chicago Migration: In the 20th century, Chicago in the North held a position in the hearts of Black people similar to "drifting to the North" (a reference to young people moving to big cities for opportunities), being the only way to escape enslavement and change their fate. The newly built factories and railway industries in Chicago represented stable jobs, equal education for future generations, and a symbol of freedom. But the promise of freedom has never truly been fulfilled.
Ku Klux Klan (KKK): In the early 19th century, the industrialization of the Northern United States was rapid, and it advocated the abolition of slavery. However, the South, with its plantation economy, relied on slavery. After the Civil War, the South was forced to abolish slavery, but the differences were not fully resolved. Former Southern soldiers established the cult-like organization of the KKK, which continued the violent rule of slavery that was "abolished in name but existing in reality" through "purification" methods such as lynching, burning, kidnapping, and executions.
These are not directly laid out but lurk in the settings, music, dialogue, and even character choices, like a set of cultural strata, engulfing the audience in a deep well of memory and symbolism before their consciousness is aware of it.
▪️ Camera and Aspect Ratio
The director chose to shoot with IMAX 70mm film, which, in the context of contemporary digital imagery dominance, is a rare choice that almost carries political implications. 70mm film retains the gritty texture of the image grains, endowing skin tones, scars, and eyes with a gaze tension that has not been washed away by history.
Among the many uses of long takes, there is a particularly exquisite scene handling: Lisa (the Asian daughter) walks out of a Black-owned store, crosses the street, goes to the white-owned store opposite to find Grace (the Asian mother), and Grace then walks into the Black-owned store to negotiate prices. The entire process is shot in one continuous take without editing jumps, yet in terms of perspective, it completes a spatial cycle from the "Black area" to the "white area" and back to the "Black area." This is not just a long take but a reproduction of the social spatial structure. During the era of racial segregation in Mississippi, Chinese-owned stores, due to their special ethnic position, were open to both Black and white people, becoming a kind of "intermediary zone." The director, through this seemingly ordinary behavior, embeds three layers of relationships: the economic interaction between Black, white, and Chinese people; the actual operation of the racial zoning system; and the subtle and multiple intermediary roles of female characters in it.
The film uses montage techniques multiple times, and one impressive example is the cross-editing of the collective dance at a Black party and the fighting scene downstairs. Upstairs, the music is intense, the body movements are dense, and the Black group releases repression and a sense of belonging through stomping, shouting, drumming, and sweating; downstairs, there is a silent, chaotic fight with blood and violence.
The two have the same rhythm, with alternating images, which is a vertical juxtaposition of culture and way of life. The upper space symbolizes the brief autonomy, carnival, and spiritual release of Black culture, while the lower space symbolizes structural violence, plunder, and silent suppression.
The director uses a dual aspect ratio structure for expression:
The extremely wide 2.76:1 aspect ratio shows the sense of enclosure of the Southern plantations and oppressive structures, carrying the experiences of historical oppression, institutional violence, and "being watched"; the 1.43:1 IMAX aspect ratio opens up the individual perspective, endowing space for individual action, resistance, and poetic existence.
The switching of aspect ratios is not just a visual grammar but also a shift in narrative stance: from the "historical object" being watched to the "cultural subject" with claims. These two aspect ratios operate simultaneously, constructing a world that constantly oscillates between oppression and breakthrough, and making the language of imagery itself a means of expressing resistance and identity tension.
▪️ Vampire Metaphor: Cultural Plunder and Institutional Assimilation
When vampires break into the real background in a fantasy form, the film completes its most important turn, from a historical film to a political fable. Vampires are not just monsters but also a concrete expression of white people's cultural plunder: they not only violently devour individuals but also use "soft means" such as family affection, money, and recognition to induce Black people to join their camp. And this joining is often accompanied by the loss of cultural identity. The greatest goal of vampires in the film is never to "kill people" but to take away your "story behind you" and assimilate you. This also reflects the ruthless appropriation and seizure of ethnic minority cultures. There are many lines and shots in the film that metaphorize this view, such as Delta Slim (the old pianist) saying that white people like to listen to the blues but do not like the Black people who created the blues; vampires originally sang Irish folk songs but, after "assimilating" Black people, they changed the rhythm and began to sing Black music. More implicitly, there is the appropriation of religious symbols in the film, such as Sammy being repeatedly pressed into water by white vampires, a scene that is almost a reversed "baptism" ceremony. He is not given a new life but forced to abandon his soul.
Open-ended Speculation:
One setting I noticed is that the two "catastrophe trigger points" are both borne by female characters: Mary, a white woman with partial Black ancestry, begins to persecute Black people after being assimilated when she enters the door. The other is the Asian mother (Grace). In the setting, vampires cannot enter the house to bite people without an invitation from someone inside. To protect her daughter, she shouts loudly: "Come on you mf!!!" giving the vampires the legal right to enter the house. Do these two "opening the door" acts imply the dual position of women in the cultural structure? Are they both intermediaries and objects used by the system? Or are they the first "persuaded to surrender" victims in the oppression mechanism?
Another ambiguous area is religion. The priest asks Sammy to "put down the guitar," to let go of the past, nationality, and soul in exchange for peace. Does this "letting go" reflect the church's stance in history of demanding Black people's obedience and suppressing memory? Or is the church also a means of controlling people? But in the end, Sammy does not put down the guitar, choosing freedom and independent will. True peace is not built on forgetting but on struggling out of memory.
The ending of the film is also highly multi-layered. On the one hand, Smoke refuses to be an accomplice of the far right and the KKK, chooses to perish together, and achieves a spiritual reunion with his wife and children; on the other hand, the love between Stack and Mary can only erase the boundaries after both become vampires. Their identity differences are eliminated, but they must live in the dark forever. This "death upon exposure to light" setting is heartbreaking and carries a strong metaphor: the assimilated love seems to gain freedom, but in reality, it is forever hidden in the shadows.
▪️ The dialogue between the elderly Sammy and the still young Stack at the end:
"That day was unforgettable for me. Was it the same for you?"
"Of course. It was the last time I saw my brother, the last time I saw the sun. Before the sun set, in those few hours, I was free."
The sunlight has not yet set, symbolizing the real, self, unswallowed existence, and that brief freedom is the last moment before history, culture, and identity are dissolved.
They survived, but the way they survived is by compromising with the "new Black culture" packaged by white people, giving up the historical burden of the blues, and integrating into a cultural shell that is more accepted by the market and easier to consume. This is not only a survival strategy but also a secret sorrow of cultural rupture.