The Sound of Sinners

On Thursday night, I watched Ryan Coogler’s Sinners at AMC’s Block 37 theatre. Going in, I didn’t know anything about the film (I didn't even watch the trailer), and was honestly expecting a typical satanic horror movie. But I was wrong. The jump scares weren’t what made Sinners stand out to me — it was the music. The isolated vocals and the slow, haunting blues songs were what set the mood before anything horrifying even happened. 

Sinners takes place in Mississippi during 1932 and follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who have returned from Chicago after working for the notorious Al Capone. Armed with cash and cases of Irish beer, they plan to open a juke joint — a safe and enjoyable space for black sharecroppers to join together. Their younger cousin, Sammie, or ‘Preacher Boy,’ joins them to help them run the place. Despite all of their efforts, it becomes clear that even a juke joint can’t protect them from the realities of a Jim Crow-led society. In Sinners, music isn’t just a supplemental element of the film; it’s more like a warning, and a signal that something darker is coming. 

The Psychological Role of Music in Sinners 

As I mentioned, in Sinners, the music isn’t just a supplemental element of the film to make it more ‘scary’. Instead, it’s a psychological tool that plays a vital role in shaping the audience’s perspective and experience. The isolated vocals and slow, haunting blues songs create a sense of unease before anything even happens. The music in this film is an example of classical conditioning, where a stimulus (in this case, music) triggers a response (such as fear or anxiety). When eerie music begins to play, the audience associates it with something frightening approaching. 

One scene that really stands out to me is when Sammie, the younger cousin of Smoke and Stack, begins to sing in the juke joint. As his enchanting voice fills the room, there’s a smooth layering underneath Sammie’s vocals, where the audience can hear elements of different eras and genres of music like jazz, R&B, hip-hop, rock, etc. This created a really rich sound. This sucks the audience in and is so mesmerizing as the music takes on a life of its own. It makes the audience lose track of everything else that’s around them. In psychology, this is called the flow state. The flow state is when people are so engrossed in one thing that that is all they focus on, and nothing else matters. In this case, the music completely hypnotizes the audience, making them lose track of their surroundings and not be present.

In Sinners, Ryan Coogler demonstrates how music isn’t just something that belongs in the background, but is a central part of the film. From Sammie’s mesmerizing performance to the haunting blues throughout the film, the music really sucks the audience in and makes the audience feel a variety of emotions, like fear, tension, and hope. The way the music draws the audience into a flow state reflects the struggles the characters are going through. Ultimately, Sinners uses music to set the mood and show the societal and emotional struggles the characters are going through.