The vampire genre has long served as a mirror for societal fears and desires.

In Black cinema, it becomes a reimagining of power, resistance and cultural identity.

The film Sinners, directed by Ryan Coogler, joins that lineage. Partly inspired by Ernie Barnes’ painting The Sugar Shack, and set in 1930s Mississippi.

Sinners doesn’t just join the list of reworked vampire films, it amplifies it.

Blending visual art, music and vampiric metaphor, the film shapes a narrative of ancestral memory fused with modern defiance.

Ryan Coogler, known for Black Panther, Fruitvale Station and Creed, said in an interview with Variety: “I love anything supernatural. I’m in. I like stories about communities, about neighborhoods, about archetypes. And I love period anything. So, when you layer those things together, that does it for me.”

Black vampire films have always offered more than fangs and folklore.

Sinners uses its dance hall setting as a direct homage to Barnes painting, exploring how Black spaces become sites of survival and you could even say transformation.

Music has long been the lifeblood of Black cinema, and Sinners elevates this tradition.

Its score merges gospel and blues with a modern sound that creates a sonic bridge between past and present.

Ryan Coogler, in a thank you letter, stated that Sinners was “A film inspired by my family, friends and ancestry.”

You can see that in the film and how it touches on the character’s spiritual beliefs, rooted in formal religious doctrine and ancestral tradition, as acts of resistance.

Hybrid practices, such as Santería rituals woven into Catholicism, mirror the film’s broader exploration of identity as both inherited and reinvented.

This metaphor resonates in the vampire genre, which has often sidelined Black narratives.

The film’s climax features a scene where those enjoying the music in Club Juke dance in a frenzy of liberation, their movements echoing Barnes painted figures.

It stands out as one of the most powerful cinematic moments I’ve seen.

The dance floor becomes both a battleground and a sanctuary reminiscent of the iconic nightclub scene in Blade.

This duality of joy as resistance and rhythm as survival reflects the struggle to exist in spaces where Black lives are neither fully seen nor entirely erased.

In an era where vampire movies often drown in being romanticized, Sinners reminds us that the genre’s sharpest fangs have always belonged to the marginalized.