Sure, Ryan Coogler’s new spooker, Sinners, is fun, creepy, and nail-bitingly tense. But since this is a Coogler film, the dialogue is straight-up hilarious. There’s a wicked scene where Michael B. Jordan’s Smoke, one half of twins named Smoke and Stack—colorful bruisers in 1930s Ole Miss—shoots a comrade. The man’s retort to a post-bullet courtesy is, “I was doing better before you shot me in the ass!”

In Sinners, out today, Jordan plays both of the Smokestack siblings, believe it or not. Whatever CGI wizardry Coogler consulted to refute the laws of physics—allowing two leading men to occupy the same place at the same time—is certainly rewarded by some emblematic acting. But Sinners also tells some hard truths. It’s an urgent rumination on race and past misdeeds, unhealed wounds that still devour our body politic.

Google a bit and you’ll see worried Reddit posts like, “Is Sinners a Vampire Movie?” Though those blood-sucking ghouls get a lot of airtime, so do impoverished sharecroppers struggling to make their way in Mississippi, where bigoted whites prey on them like toxic Transylvanians. The film doesn’t showcase the day-to-day brutalization so much as imply it via elegiac frames of whistling cotton fields. There’s much to endure before Dracula and his homies show up and menace the life (wholly intolerable under Jim Crow) out of the town’s sweat-toiled laborers, who are just looking for an escape.

Enter the Smokestack brothers—back in town after seven years in Chicago, doing legwork for Al Capone—who want to do their part. So, they put their abundance of bootleg liquor to proper use and give the townsfolk an unforgettable juke-joint night (rife with music and laughter) in their brand-new, rag-tag sawmill. But first, they must summon their cousin Sammie (a suave Miles Caton in his first major film role), a guitar griot whose acoustic gifts will be perfect for the shindig.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Sinners is fun, creepy, and nail-bitingly tense.

We meet Sammie at the outset of Sinners via a voiceover sequence telling of music’s Dionysian intimations. As a mystical lilt (belonging to Annie, Smoke’s ex) speaks of the musician’s sacred role as griot touched by the muses, Sammie—bearing brutal claw marks on his cheeks—enters a church, quivering with his guitar in hand. His father, at the pulpit, tells Sammie to let go of the “devil music” that has undoubtedly anguished his soul. Before we know it, a title card affirms, “One day earlier,” and we jump back to a normal morning.

Smoke and his identical, Stack, talk about past regrets, pull a gun on the racist sawmill owner, and encounter a seething rattlesnake. Then, they hit the town with Sammie, who Stack instructs to strum for a thirsty passerby. Sammie is an honest-to-God, Howlin’ Wolf-like dynamo. Kudos to cinematographer Autumn Durlald’s work not only in this scene, but throughout Sinners; her sepia cinematography captures the electric amusement in both the crowd and Stack. The entire film bursts with verdant 15/65mm zooms, which make the Mississippi Delta look humid and wonderfully menacing.

Sometimes a smile—fostered by an unequal society that pits Blacks against non-Blacks—can be especially toxic.

At the juke joint, we meet Stack’s old flame, Mary, a biracial woman (played ardently by Hailee Steinfeld), who offers a whole lot of glamorous smack talk. The twins invite her (for emotional support and her indefatigable humor) as well as pantry proprietor Grace Chow (Li Jun Li) and backwoods blues legend Delta Slim (a galactic Delroy Lindo). We also catch up with Annie (delectably portrayed by Wunmi Mosaku), who provides the culinary heft for the patrons. The ensemble gives the set a graceless joie de vivre, à la The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.

Later that night, Sammie plays some songs for the juke-joint audience, and Coogler returns to the griot-musician motif from earlier in the movie. It’s a striking montage full of undefeatable depictions of Black American heritage. Coogler merges funk legends from the near future with twerking hip-hop hot girls, while African Shamans bang on ancient drums in time to our hero Sammie’s heart-contorting blues refrain.

The music and the vibration is the Great Escape—relief from the yawning swamps and podunk mud huts, which too many African Americans occupied well into the New Deal epoch. Coogler’s set-pieces are flawless, placing you smack-dab in the middle of a colorful world peopled by fast-living characters who speak with slow, molasses-rich drawls. If anything, there should be more moments between the townsfolk and the twins, providing more insight into Smoke and Stack’s backstories, pre-Chicago. We know nothing about them, except that they left this urgent world that Coogler presents so dutifully.

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Eventually, some jocular white folks arrive, asking to join the party, raising all kinds of red flags. And just a few scenes back, a mottled, critically burned Irish neighbor fumbles like a bat out of hell to a nearby hut, also begging admission, and. . . let’s just say that he wears out his welcome in a rather toothsome manner. Is it the same man from before—cleaned up and accompanied by a gaggle of smiling chums—now asking the gatherers if everybody could just be family?

Sometimes, a smile—fostered by an unequal society that pits Blacks against non-Blacks—can be especially toxic. When one of the patrons says, “They give me the willies,” as the interlopers depart, Smoke responds, “Well, crackers at nighttime will do that to ya.” When Mary, whom Stack tells to keep an eye on the group, sees them singing some distance from the juke joint, she finds equally dispossessed fellow travelers. She winces when the leader (a radiant Jack O’Connell) half-heartedly touches her, offering money to attend the party. Leave it to Delta Slim to keep us belly laughing as we watch in suspense to see how it unfolds. In a frightful moment, Slim slumps forward, loudly choking, scaring everybody alive to death until he says, a beat later, that he just drank too much booze. The cumulative effect? A lived-in vibrancy pulsing through the homey sidewalks and deep Mississippi pines, giving the movie the illustrative mojo of a great folktale come to life.

There’s so much more to love in Sinners. Coogler’s film-nerd 10,000 hours are on ecstatic display, from the Miller’s Crossling-like antics in the woods to the Jack Torrance-esque theatrics of his clown-faced demonics. And talk about catharsis! The auteur’s images of redemption, not only for Sammie but for Smoke, Stack, and us, are genuine and rewarding. Sinners is faithfully superb.