How Ryan Coogler structured ‘Sinners’ like Metallica song

Ryan Coogler only makes personal movies. “Fruitvale Station” was set in his hometown of Oakland, California, and explored the last day of Oscar Grant. “Creed” was dreamed up for his father, who loved “Rocky” unabashedly. And “Black Panther” let him grapple with the idea of what it means to be African. In just four features, he’d established himself as one of the top filmmakers working today. It hardly mattered if it was based on a real-life incident, or part of the Marvel machine: Coogler made the movies his own and audiences followed. But one thing he hadn’t yet done was a movie that came entirely from his own imagination.

“Sinners,” which Warner Bros. releases in theatres nationwide this weekend, is just that: Coogler’s first original film, blends elements of supernatural horror, gangster drama, romance, blues music and action across one eventful day in Clarksdale, Mississippi in, 1932 in which a community opens a juke joint and then has to defend it from a vampire army growing outside. It’s something that needs to be seen to be believed, right down to Coogler’s longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan playing identical twins. And it’s already a critical hit.

“Jurassic Park” is probably not a film that anyone would categorize first as horror, Coogler knows, but there were terrifying moments that imprinted on his consciousness. Films like “Get Out” and “The Shining” did the same. He wanted to give audiences that feeling too and threw everything he loved into “Sinners.” “I pulled from a lot of films that inspired me,” Coogler said. “I wanted to pay back the theatrical audience the same things that I feel were poured into me.”

The setting of the film was also inspired by his family’s ties to a Mississippi of the past. One was his maternal grandfather who originated from Merrill, Mississippi, and moved to Oakland, where the family remains. The other was the man who introduced him to blues music, his Uncle James, who died while Coogler was making “Creed.”

Fitting for the scale of the story, “Sinners” was shot on large format film including IMAX 65 mm and Ultra Panavision 70 (65 mm film shot on Panavision lenses in the widest aspect ratio, which Quentin Tarantino famously resurrected for “The Hateful Eight”).

“I knew it would be a period piece and a horror movie, so I knew film made the most sense for that,” Coogler said. “But after getting into the research of the project and learning the epic scale of the contribution of Delta Blues when it comes to global popular culture, how this music kinda launched pop music as we know it ... I realized that this was a larger-than-life story.”

Coogler called on Jordan, who has appeared in all of his films, to play the identical twins Smoke and Stack. Their characters served in the war and worked with Chicago gangsters, but have come back to Mississippi with plans to open a juke joint. Though having Jordan as twins was great in theory and even final product, the execution was challenging. On some days, both felt like they were making a movie for the first time. Some scenes were shot traditionally, while others used cutting edge technology called the halo rig that allowed them to digitally place Jordan’s head on the body of a double.

Jordan might have looked a bit like “RoboCop” on set while in the contraption, but the end result is seamless even on unforgiving large format film. For the performance, it required a certain nimbleness to be able to switch back and forth. Jordan had fun with both characters but said that a preference for one over the other, “really depended on how tired I was that day.” It won’t take audiences long to distinguish between the two: Smoke is a little grumpier, a little more serious and haunted by a loss.

Stack is a little lighter — a charmer who smiles through the pain. Jordan gave both different postures, mannerisms and even slightly different voices to help. And he praised his co-stars Hailee Steinfeld, who plays Stack’s ex Mary, and Wunmi Mosaku who plays Smoke’s longtime love Annie for dealing with his “crazy ass personalities and mood swings.”

Associated Press