Ryan Coogler's latest; apparently the only other thing I've seen from him is Black Panther (2018). He wrote and directed. Long-term collaborator Michael B. Jordan led as gangster twins, just like Tom Hardy in Legend (2015) and Robert De Niro just now in The Alto Knights (2025).
The template is essentially From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) transplanted from dangerous present-day Mexico to lethal Mississippi in 1932. There's a cracker soundtrack that fuels a virtuoso bridging scene in the middle, encompassing Black music culture in the USA, warming up the jukes of all times. More of this would've been very welcome (c.f. Small Axe (2020)). Beyond that it's just what was widely telegraphed/spoiled: tired vampire tropes leavened by symbolism and gestures to history that, if you don't recognise them, are meaningless. For instance there's a staging scene where master vampire/Irishman Jack O'Connell is hunted by members of a Choctaw tribe only to be rescued by some people we later understand to be Klanspeople. O'Connell later engages in some mad craic just like a gospel meeting, suggesting that it wasn't just the Blues (at least as played by Miles Caton) that was the devil's music. I didn't try to unpick the commentary on Christianity. I was very happy to see Delroy Lindo (as always). And there's nothing to complain about in Jordan's performance, excepting perhaps that it lacks the humour and vulnerability of a Jamie Foxx.
A Critic's Pick by Manohla Dargis. Coogler is feted at least partly because he survived/elevated the MCU and Rocky. That opening scene, of Caton bursting into his father's church, echoed Kill Bill (2003/2004). Romance yielding to violence, the vampire's promise of taking the pain away. Wendy Ide: the threads of story get messy. Dana Stevens: Caton's "true power as a performer [is] to bring together musical spirits from the past and future in a delirious alchemy that transcends time and space." — and having summoned them, what a waste not to put them to more use. Reminded her of Jordan Peele's Us (2019) and Nope (2022), which I found far more opaque.
Later the romance, doomerism and reliance on the soundtrack put me in mind of Crazy Heart (2009).
