Horror in the heartland

This looks like a very cool movie: Sinners, directed by Ryan Coogler (Black Panther) and starring Michael B. Jordan. It's a vampire film that looks like it's set in the post-WWI era, following twin brothers (both played by Jordan) who return home only to find that there's an evil presence lurking there.

This has been a buzzy movie ever since it was first announced earlier this year: THR's report was breathless, touting that it was an original idea from Coogler and that the sales process was pretty secretive.

Warner Bros. ended up winning the distribution rights for it, and just released the first trailer:

That's how you do a trailer: it really builds up the suspense without giving too much away.

This feels like it could vibe nicely with P. Djèlí Clark’s excellent novella Ring Shout, another Black horror story set in the post-WWI years, which I'd recommend checking out.

P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout reimagines Lovecraftian horror

Reimagining Lovecraft, Robin Hobb on The Farseer Trilogy, and more Hello! I hope that you’ve been faring well in the last couple of weeks. One of the things that I’ve found myself doing the last couple of months is work around the house, activities that keep me focused

Transfer OrbitAndrew Liptak

Without painting too broad a brush, it feels like there's something of a renaissance brewing in this space: Tananarive Due's The Reformatory blew up since its release last year, as well as the Jordan Peele/John Joseph Adams-edited anthology Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, as well as a whole bunch of other books that have hit shelves in the last couple of years – not to mention films like Get Out and Nope from Peele.

It's obviously too early to tell how or if this film will fit into that movement – if there actually is a movement. Either way, this looks promising, and I'll definitely be making plans to check it out when it hits theaters on March 7th, 2025.