Abstract
In Sinners (2025), written and directed by Ryan Coogler, intercultural histories of music, religion and oral tradition inform a modern and complex horror tale confronting the terror of Jim Crow in the post–World War I Mississippi Delta. The film, starring frequent Coogler collaborator and muse Michael B. Jordan as twin war veterans out to reestablish their lives as juke joint owners, coalesces themes of economic repression, racial voyeurism, and secular and religious entanglements with cinematic horror allegories of objectification, consumption and possession. This review explores the film’s tense and violent examination of these themes and the lived and imagined spaces of Black freedom, transformation and free expression mediated through ecstatic musical performance and immersion.
Date Received
August 4, 2025
Date Revised
October 16, 2025
Date Accepted
November 14, 2025
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Bowles, Terri
(2025)
"At the Crossroads: Ryan Coogler’s Metaphysical Meditation on Blues Music’s Power of Salvation and the Terror of Racial Predation in “Sinners”M,"
Markets, Globalization & Development Review:
Vol. 10:
No.
2, Article 5.
DOI: 10.23860/MGDR-2025-10-02-05
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/mgdr/vol10/iss2/5
Included in
Anthropology Commons, Economics Commons, Film and Media Studies Commons, Marketing Commons, Other Business Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons, Sociology Commons
Author Bio
Terri P. Bowles is a part-time professor of media and strategic communication at Iona University, a former adjunct professor of media studies at The New School, and an advisor to the provost at the University of Mount Saint Vincent. She is a former magazine editor at The History Channel, Vibe and numerous other publications focusing on arts and popular culture. Terri is a cofounder, panel curator and moderator at Daughters of Eve Media, which highlights the contributions of film scholars and groundbreaking innovators in cinema and has partnered with the American Black Film Festival for more than a dozen years. She also is the founder of Stage Flight Productions, an investor in diverse theatrical productions on Broadway and across the U.S.