The Blood Of America: Sinners

The Blood of America

“There are legends of people... 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.”

Annie, Sinners

Before I begin, this piece contains spoilers. 

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, are you sitting comfortably?

Are you sure?

Well, okay then.

The year 2025 has been a tumultuous one for certain. But, for people who like being scared or creeped out, it has been a stunner so far, both in the cinema and the bookstore. For this article I’m going to be looking at and comparing two genuine masterpieces of the genre, one movie and one book. 

Both of these came to us in the spring. In cinemas, Ryan Coogler gave us Sinners, whilst Stephen Graham Jones released his novel The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. Both of these are astounding works that transcend what some view as the limitations of the horror genre, producing something new and, well, horrifically wonderful. 

They also do this whilst working within one of horror’s most overused subgenres – the world of the vampire. They manage to give us some new perspectives on this old, and overfamiliar, monster. From the collective mind of the vampires in Sinners to the phenotypic changes that are experienced by the Nachzehrer when they feed on different species and communities, we get a new take on bloodsuckers.

I wanted to write this piece both as a celebration of these titles but also to look at how they tell very similar stories, each in their own way. Both Jones and Coogler have used a scary story to look at much greater, far too human, terrors, and none of us should look away.

Let’s start with God. Or rather, the European, Christian interpretation of that word and how it is used as a way of controlling and colonising others. In Sinners, one of the lead characters is a young, and prodigiously talented, Bluesman who goes by the moniker of Preacher Boy (his father runs the local church). In The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, the Blackfeet vampire Good Stab seeks out a preacher in a Montana outpost town, for reasons that become clear during the story. 

Both of the stories frame Christianity as an apparent refuge from the forces of darkness, but go on to expose it as a false one. In Sinners, recitation of the Lord’s Prayer fails to protect Preacher Boy during a confrontation with the vampire leader Remmick, who started his existence as an Irish labourer.

“Long ago... the men who stole my father's land forced these words upon us. I hated those men, but the words still bring me comfort. Those men lied to themselves and lied to us.”

Remmick, Sinners

In …Hunter, Good Stab confronts the pastor Arthur Beaucarne, who he refers to as Three-Persons, with the church’s tendency to fetishise the suffering of Christ, and how it feels perverse to a people who are suffering in the here and now.

“You put your reminders of pain on the wall and pray to them. We still hurt, so we don’t need that reminder.”

Good Stab, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

In Sinners, Remmick’s rejection of the Lord’s Prayer as a weapon against him is because it was forced on his people by the English, just as it was forced on the plantation slaves by the owners. Because it is a false litany to him, and ultimately to Preacher Boy as well, it has no effect. In …Hunter, Three-Person’s church is a symbol of the occupation of the Blackfeet Nation by the white settlers and the harm done by them to both the native people and their lands.

Both stories are able to create sympathy for their monsters. In Sinners, the pain felt by Mary and Stack when Annie, who has been bitten, is dispatched by Smoke before she can change, is heartrending. To them, Annie was family and would have been welcomed into their hive mind as part of the community. They don’t realise that Remmick controls the vampires and is simply seeking control and power over others, to be the coloniser, not the colonised.

Meanwhile, Good Stab can never be part of his tribe again. They are aware of him, as both the Fullblood and Takes No Scalps. He is both a monster to be feared and a force of vengeance to be hailed, but he is not of them. Graham Jones has created a variation of vampire that starts to take on the physical characteristics of the creatures they feed on. Therefore, for Good Stab to maintain a semblance of his old self, he has to do the one thing that truly horrifies him – feed on his own people.

In the second part of the book, Good Stab is tortured by the one who made him. This other vampire taunts and victimises Good Stab with his knowledge that he no longer has a tribe, and this part of the book is deeply upsetting. Make no mistake, Graham Jones does not shy away from the violence and death that Good Stab brings and causes, but by the end, monster though he is, you feel for him.

Good Stab does manage to find a community of sorts though, when he is accepted by a buffalo that he saved and who he builds a herd for. This is, as you may have guessed, where the book’s title comes from – Good Stab hunts the trappers who are decimating the buffalo herds of the Montana plains.

Remmick’s victims all talk of the ‘love and fellowship’ that they feel they have after being turned. There is, so they claim, no prejudice or bigotry, they are all equals. It can be seen, as the film progresses, that they are really just Remmick’s creatures. 

In this, I see similarity with Magua, the Huron villain from Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans. As the film’s climax approaches, Hawkeye, the adopted son of Chingachgook of the Mohicans, challenges Magua that he wants to be like those who have hurt him, the settlers and their soldiers.

“Magua’s heart is twisted. He would make himself into what twisted him.”

Hawkeye, The Last of the Mohicans

Finally, I want to look at how both Coogler and Graham Jones show the power that can be found in tradition and a shared culture that is born from a community, not forced upon it. In …Hunter, Good Stab does manage to build some connection with members of the BlackFeet nation, and is ultimately able to overcome his foe through his knowledge of the land, although this comes at a horrific cost to him.

In Sinners, the power is found in music. Specifically, in the blues. It is not the Lord’s Prayer that helps Preacher Boy battle Remmick, it is his guitar and the power that is held there by his use of it to bring people together (it’s also what brings Remmick to the juke joint on that night).  

His ability is demonstrated in one of the most bravura sequences of recent cinema. Although Remmick and the vampires also show how music unites them, it is Remmick at the centre and the others following his tune. This contrasts with the shared experience that Preacher Boy and Delta Slim (an award-worthy turn from Delroy Lindo) have created in the juke joint earlier. 

So, there you have it. Two pieces of work that take an old legend and build something new and astonishing from it. Both force us to look at how colonisation has harmed, subsumed and in many cases destroyed other cultures, but also they show us how those cultures can fight back, and the power that they have. Both scare their audience, but also they move them. And I love them both so very, very much.