Spoiler alert! The following post discusses important plot points, including the ending of “Sinners” (in theaters now).
Ryan Coogler’s horror movie “Sinners” goes hard when it comes to the blues, so it makes sense that a bona fide music legend would show up before the credits roll.
The filmmaker enlisted Buddy Guy to play the older version of a key character in his 1930s-set period epic. And it also led to an emotional day on set: One of Coogler’s biggest inspirations for “Sinners” — and Guy’s casting – was a blues-loving uncle who saw the guitar legend perform more than 50 times. As they filmed a post-credits scene set in 1992 on the first day of production, star Michael B. Jordan hugged Guy, and “it hit me like a ton of bricks,” Coogler says. “I realized I had dressed Buddy Guy up like my uncle without knowing it. And seeing Mike hug him, it broke me down. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what this movie is about this whole time.’ ”
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In “Sinners,” gangster twins Smoke and Stack (Jordan) find a juke joint in their Mississippi hometown and recruit their gifted guitar-playing cousin Sammie (Miles Caton in the ‘30s, Guy in the ‘90s) to play opening night. However, their shindig is turned upside down with the appearance of Irish vampire Remmick (Jack O’Connell) who attacks the partygoers, turning them into new bloodsuckers and adding to his army.
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Coogler and Jordan break down the movie’s emotional ending and a time-jumping post-credits scene:
What happens in the ending of ‘Sinners’?
Remmick first “turns” Stack’s former lover Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), and she makes Stack a vamp, which knocks his brother Smoke for a loop. From there, he and the survivors try to stay alive until dawn. Smoke’s ex Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) is bitten, and she makes Smoke stake her in the heart before she can turn. Smoke and Stack ultimately come to blows, Sammie makes it out of the sawmill alive and Smoke and Sammie defeat Remmick when the sun rises and he (along with most of his vampires) go up in flames.
But that’s not the end of the fight. The shady white guy who sold the twins the sawmill was a local Ku Klux Klan leader, and the place is a trap: He and his men aim to kill anyone who comes out in the morning. So while a tired and scarred Sammie returns to his preacher dad, ex-soldier Smoke rounds up machine guns and heavy weaponry to take on Klan members. He kills them all, but is mortally wounded himself, and as he dies, Smoke is reunited with both Annie and the child they lost as a baby.
“This movie for me was about identity, as my movies always are, and how people see themselves, but also what people do,” Coogler explains. “Smoke sees himself as a father and as a man who’s unredeemable because of his past sins, but he also sees himself as a soldier. For him, soldier means he’s a killer. He’s as good at killing people as Sammie is at singing (and) as Stack is at coming up with schemes and talking people into doing things that they might not want to do.
“That would always be how he would respond to what happens. It was also the only ending that made sense.”
Does ‘Sinners’ have a post-credits scene?
There are two. The final moment after the credits roll finds young Sammie at his dad’s church, doing a sweet rendition of “This Little Light of Mine.” But the meatiest one is a mid-credits scene that catches up with Sammie in 1992. Decades later, he’s playing in his own club and dressed to the nines, just like his cousins.
Old Sammie sits at the bar when he’s shocked to find Stack and Mary, very much still kicking and rocking a ‘90s vibe, walk through the door. Stack reveals to Sammie that he made a deal with Smoke to let the kid live out his life. Before leaving, Stack goes in and looks like he might bite Sammie and finally turn him, but instead embraces him.
Jordan feels that Stack would keep his word because he “owed” his brother that one wish. “He still checked in one time, just right before he’s getting ready to go,” he says.
The actor thinks Stack wanted to hear Sammie play live again: “He’s probably the last person alive that knew who he was before he was a vampire. There was an honesty that was there and a vulnerability that he wasn’t going to get any more for the rest of the eternity.”
Jordan also appreciated revisiting the ‘90s with his wardrobe: a Coogi sweater, Cartier glasses and a brass knuckle ring that reads “Stack.” “Hopefully the kids this Halloween, they pull up.”
