Welcome To Freedom*

*some restrictions apply 

By now, I’ve annoyed everyone and their mama with my love of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. I’ve deconstructed it in group chats, Bluesky threads, and podcast episodes. After two viewings, I cannot shake the aching longing that runs under its narrative. 

Vampires thirst for blood because it grants them life. They hunger to touch humanity again but settle for humans instead. Those separated from their roots through the diaspora long to feel a connection, a sense of home. However, they will settle for a community where they can find it even if it comes with a high cost. The vampire and the cultural orphan adopt new ways of living after accepting a promise of what they desire: eternal life or not feeling so alone. 

What is a deal with the Devil when you’re already in Hell? 

There is a moment at the very end of the film that stands out. It is when Sammie asks Stack if the day that sealed all their fates was the best of their lives. The moment shot me full of emotion in a way that can’t be described unless you’ve ever felt shackled yourself. “For a few hours-,” Stack says in his delectable drawl, “we was free.”

That freedom cost them everything. That’s something people who have never been truly stuck cannot understand. You are making the choices you think are right at the time and hoping they lead you out of your chains. Whether what’s weighing you down is the sexism, the racism, or the capitalist system of your own country, your mental health, your physical ability. Or a combination of all of the above. If you are lucky to find a way to alleviate the agony, you rarely turn it down. 

Society Punishes Individuality

Across many cultures, safety often means adopting the most average existence available. It’s an evolutionary behavior developed to keep us part of the herd. I don’t mean that as a dig- more so that we are encouraged to all desire similar “ideal” lifestyles. We are instructed what to want. Should we decide that the general consensus of what success and belonging are doesn’t fulfill us, we run the risk of ostracization from our families and communities of origin. Or worse.  

Remmick offered “love and fellowship” in his vampire clan to those who felt their origins no longer provided it to them. The gnaw of feeling like an outcast grew into a hunger that wouldn’t be satisfied until he had his ultimate prize: true connection. Remmick’s envy of Sammie’s ability to conjure connections consumed him to the point of his own death. When used as a gift, that ability was what sustained Sammie for decades. We hold on to our identities in funny ways – even when it costs us. 

What’s the price of your pain? 

Stack was a slave to the money. Smoke was a slave to the past and his own pain. Mary and Grace were slaves to their slightly higher positions they’d been able to scrape up to in society. Remmick was a slave to the cult of self. Sammie refused to be a slave to small mindsets. Annie was collateral for them all. 

Annie, who was willing to opt out of the systems offered to her, is arguably the only one to truly have freedom. She saw what was, what wasn’t, and what could be with no misgivings. It was accepting the currency of the Mississippi Delta’s plantations and the trade offerings from her community or nothing. She stood on business about not becoming part of her own captivity.  She stepped out of the pattern and broke the cycle.

The Price of Freedom is High

Ending the film with Sammie was the best possible choice Coogler could have made to cement Sinner’s commentary. Sammie was the bridge between worlds. The spiritual and the material, the past of crop share cotton picking and the future of being an artist yet still a commodity, the pain of creating blues and the joy of performing it. His physical and mental scars were just a part of his story, not a dark spot on his success. He knew that they represented the price he paid for his freedom. (Side note: if you didn’t want to hug him or put a hand on his shoulder when he described waking up with PTSD flashbacks, I don’t know what to tell you. Get that man some therapy PLEASE, even if he only has a few years left!) 

Yet Sammie ultimately felt the sting of separation. He knew moving from Clarksdale and his family was the right choice. He knew the world he left behind no longer existed. That gut-deep knowing didn’t stop him from aching so fervently that he named his club after the woman he loved and lost that day or from playing for Stack and Mary once they reappeared. Freedom was worth separating from the expected and embracing a new way.

There will be more analysis of Sinners from me, but for now, I’m allowing the ache.