Review by C.J. Bunce

If you ever envisioned a movie where the villains are vampires embodying the cast of The Mighty Wind, then , now streaming on Max, may be for you.  If not, I can recommend several other movies that have elements Ryan Coogler plays with in his latest movie starring Michael B. Jordan.  is a movie about twin brothers (played by Jordan) trying to survive in the plantation South of the Prohibition era.  Tenaj L. Jackson and Hailee Steinfeld co-star as the brothers’ love interests, and newcomer Miles Caton plays Sammie, a promising young guitar player and singer whose music is so good it summons evil itself to his door.  The imaginative director piles on a vampire plot and a gore fest that isn’t as good as your average slasher horror movie, followed by a series of denouements that rivals the patience you had for the end of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.  Add to that a Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino-inspired KKK revenge sequence and the result is full of many ideas that ultimately don’t work together.

There’s a lot to unpack in this movie.

I usually try to save my reviews here at for movies I recommend to readers.  But I count myself a Ryan Coogler fan, so it’s hard to skip over his latest, even if it’s just plain bad.  This was promising because of its cryptic trailers.  “What the heck is this going to be about?” often leads to something surprisingly good.  It’s disappointing that the writer-director of Black Panther and Creed didn’t make the ideas he swirls around gel.  Switching gears from fantasy and sports nostalgia to a tale that looked like the 1980s classic Crossroads and other bad-deals-with-the-devil stories seemed right in his wheelhouse.  

The first half of this 2 hours and 20 minutes production establishes the twins, who go by Smoke and Stack, as entrepreneurs for their era.  The great use of cars, clothes, and trains almost sets up a believable historical environment for 1932 Mississippi–if not for a jarring use of camera movements, filters, and not-so-great CGI to re-create cotton fields and other locations that slip on some “uncanny valley” issues.  A high point is character actor Delroy Lindo as a local former sharecropper whose role almost approaches the gravitas of Samuel L. Jackson in Django Unchained.  He serves as a good mentor for both the twins and Sammie.

But you can almost hear the needle scratch the record when the show’s monsters show up, in the form of a skinny Irish folk singer, played by Jack O’Connell.  What?!  That’s right, there’s a little Midsommar/Wicker Man weirdness happening with these vampires, who break into Riverdance when they aren’t crooning and enticing their intended prey with… folk ballads.  Coogler created one strange version of hell here for sure.  Even a revenge scene where Smoke opens up a Tommy gun on the local KKK posse doesn’t stick like it should–you can tell Coogler was reaching for a satisfying finish like those moments from Spike Lee’s BlacKKKlansman or Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

One promising scene quickly replays a scene in John Carpenter’s The Thing where everyone must prove they aren’t the monster hiding in the room.  Another is a musical sequence with a time-bending, psychedelic dance party that borders on the creepy spiritualism of Hayao Miyazaki’s strangest anime ideas, like something out of Spirited Away.  The historicity is here, then it’s gone.  The time travel is here, then it’s gone.  Then a vampire movie is overlaid on the set-up.  The twins and their brethren look strong, charismatic and in control as they create a new safe haven away from Jim Crow and all the ugliness of the South, then they’re stripped of everything.  Details Coogler smears across the picture are often crude and gross, complete with sweat and sex and drooling, and that’s before the slasher gore fest begins.  About the only special effect worth mentioning is the century-old use of making Jordan look like two people, interacting with himself with two cameras, split screens, and an acting double.

Try Salem’s Lot for a good recent vampire story.  Try Crossroads for a great movie about blues music and deals with the devil.  Skeleton Key offers better use of Southern ancestral spirits in a creepy surprise.  And if you want to see a solid Depression era use of an actor playing twins, don’t miss John Hillerman as a lawbreaker and law enforcer in Paper Moon. has the same vibe as The Devil’s Advocate and it’s more ambitious than Jordan Peele’s Get Out, but except for a couple good jumps and frights, the slasher horror parts have nothing on the 2020s Halloween or sequel Halloween Kills.  Coogler will need to keep trying if hopes to tap into Quentin Tarantino’s mastery of the bloody operatic climax, and Spike Lee’s use of allegory to dig into race and justice issues.

Michael B. Jordan fans may want to watch this just to see his ability to work with any role.  is now streaming on Max.