The 'Sinners' Ending Explained

Ryan Coogler's Sinners is tracking to have a huge weekend at the box office. The movie has a massive IMAX release, and the director has a ton of other film formats in which you can view the movie.

I chose IMAX, because I live in Los Angeles and I like my movies to be loud and in my face.

It was a spectacular experience that involved a lot of crowd reactions and a cool post-credits scene you should stay and watch.

Today, we're going to unpack the ending of the movie and talk about what it means.

Let's dive in.

[Warning: Major Spoilers Ahead for the movie Sinners]

The Sinners Plot

Ryan Coogler's Sinners throws audiences headfirst into a potent cocktail of Southern Gothic, horror-thriller, and siege narrative.

At the start, we're introduced to World War I veterans Smoke and Stack – compellingly brought to life by Michael B. Jordan pulling double duty.

Their return to their hometown of Clarksdale isn't a quiet one. They carry the weight and reputation of navigating the underworld of Al Capone's Chicago. These aren't naive heroes; they're men shaped by violence. But their only desire now is to carve out a space for their community: a juke joint.

In order to do that, they have to make a deal with the KKK, buying the old mill that will house the club from its white owner, Hogwood (David Maldonado), who is deeply involved with the hate group.

The KKK is warned to stay away, or feel the wrath of the brothers, but you can tell they don't plan on staying away too long.

Meanwhile, we meet Remmick (Jack O'Connell), a vampire escaping a Native American tribe. He finds unwilling allies in a KK -leaning married couple, Bert (Peter Dreimanis) and Joan (Lola Kirke), quickly turning them into vampires and establishing the film's core threat.

The narrative quickly shifts locale, zeroing in on its central, pressure-cooker setting: a local juke joint. That night, Smoke and Stack are going to have a party.

They have Sammie (Miles Caton) play blues music, and his performance conjures spirits from across time. We learn there's a legend that musicians can bridge the gap between life and death if they play the blues well.

Remmick, Bert, and Joan make their way to a local juke joint. Like traditional vampire lore, Remmick and his companions need an invitation to enter a dwelling.

Smoke senses something wrong and denies them entry. However, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) – a childhood friend of Smoke's brother Stack and Stack's former lover) believes they are paying customers and invites them in.

This leads to Mary being turned, who then turns Stack.

The vampires are after Sammie, they want his musical prowess to help them bridge the gap between life and death. He also offers them a chance to become vampires, which ensures immortality, community, and freedom from racism.

Especially since he knows the KKK will be there in the morning to kill these people anyway.

Now, the remaining humans – Smoke, his wife Annie, Sammie, Grace, Delta Slim, and Pearline (Jayme Lawson) have to figure out how to hold off these vampires and survive the night.

As the night progresses, they turn more people inside the juke joint until only a small group of humans remains: Smoke, his wife Annie, Sammie, Grace, Delta Slim, and Pearline (Jayme Lawson), a young woman Sammie was dating.

Annie informs the group of the vampires' weaknesses (garlic, silver, sunlight) and confirms that only a stake through the heart or sunrise can kill them permanently.

Eventually, the vampires breach the juke joint's defenses, leading to a bloody standoff.

While Smoke and the survivors manage to kill most of the vampires, their side suffers significant casualties. Grace dies tragically while using a makeshift Molotov cocktail; Pearline is overwhelmed by vampires; and Delta Slim sacrifices himself to allow Sammie to escape.

Smoke faces profound personal tragedy when he is forced to stake Annie after she is bitten.

He later confronts the vampirized Stack but cannot bring himself to kill his brother; likewise, Stack is unable to bite Smoke due to a protective hoodoo bag Annie had given Smoke years before.

Sammie manages to escape the building but is pursued by Remmick.

In a desperate act, Sammie smashes his prized guitar over Remmick's head, embedding its silver disk in the vampire's skull. This incapacitates Remmick long enough for Smoke to deliver the fatal blow.

'As dawn breaks, Remmick and the remaining vampires burn into ash.

However, Sinners delivers a final, chilling twist. The horror shifts from the supernatural to the grimly historical reality of the Deep South.

The juke joint's establishment involved compromises with the KKK, and their arrival post-vampire siege adds a layer of biting social commentary.

Smoke sends Sammie to safety, retrieves weapons from his army days, and makes a final stand, killing many Klan members before being fatally shot.

As he dies, Smoke envisions Annie and their deceased baby daughter in the afterlife, whom he joins shortly after.

The film ends by returning to its opening scene: Sammie, scarred and clutching the broken handle of his guitar, stumbles into his father's church.

Despite his father's pleas to abandon the instrument and his music, Sammie drives off, knowing he will become a blues legend.

The Sinners Mid Credits and Post Credits Sequence 

The mid credits scene is a flashforward to 1992, where Sammie has become a world-famous musician.

He's visited by is visited by Stack and Mary, who have not aged.

Stack discloses that he bargained with Smoke, trading his own life to secure Sammie's freedom. Although Sammie is later offered immortality, he refuses it.

Honoring Stack's request, Sammie plays a song and confesses that the night at the juke joint, despite causing nightmares, was the best day he ever lived.

Stack echoes this sentiment, reflecting that it was the last time he saw his brother and the sun, and the only moment he truly felt free.

For the post credit scene, we meet a young Sammie singing "This Little Light of Mine." This can be seen as an homage to the music that will be his guiding light through the rest of his life.

Sinners Ending Explained

This is a poignant film about the past coming back to haunt you. Smoke and Stack are guys who were abused as kids. They want to build a better life for their families, but things have never really gone their way.

They were involved in crime in the past, have lost family members, and it appears as if the sins they committed now have manifested as vampires, coming to suck the lift out of them.

Sammie is also dealing with all this, knowing that his father wants him to choose the path of god, but instead he chose music. His father tells him, "If you keep dancing with the devil, one day he's gonna follow you home."

And the movie is the fulfillment of that prophecy.

There's also the setting of 1932, where we see that no matter how much success these two black brothers have, they cannot escape the inevitable racism of America, which will stop at nothing to kill them.

At the core of this movie is a search for freedom -- the freedom to play music, the freedom to own a business, the freedom from racism, and the freedom to just exist without people trying to kill you all the time.

The lure of being a vampire is that you might survive long enough to see or to feel that freedom, but if you sell your soul to them, you also give up things like sunrises and joy.

Summing Up the Ending of Sinners Explained

These are all just my musings 24 hours after seeing the movie, so I am not sure they're all correct, just what comes to mind in the immediacy.

What did you think of the ending of Sinners? Did the twist catch you by surprise?

Let me know what you think in the comments.