Sinners is Ryan Coogler’s fifth feature as a writer-director. It also stands as the first opportunity the filmmaker has had to express a totally original vision. His debut, Fruitvale Station, was based on real events, and all the films in between were built around very well-established characters. That Coogler was able to make exciting, meaningful cinema from IP constrained by tropes and rules suggested that his first outing entirely free from such binding could be truly special. Lo and behold, it sure is.

Set in the Mississippi Delta in the early nineteen-thirties, Sinners begins with identical twins known as Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan, one of Coogler’s most steadfast collaborators) returning to their hometown after time away in Chicago, where they were rumored to be up to nefarious business. Loaded with cash acquired under mysterious circumstances, the siblings intend to buy an abandoned property and open a juke joint, its bar stocked with libations acquired from the Irish and Italian neighborhoods of that northern metropolis they scuttled away from. Their timeline is ambitious, but it turns out that’s not the riskiest part of the venture.

The plot is a wild ride that allows Coogler to play with all manner of cinematic structures. For a while, the movie plays out like the stretch of a heist film where the team of specialists are assembled, though its musicians and mystically inclined cooks rather than safecrackers. At other times, the film is like a celebratory musical or a tense drama about steadfast rebellion against racism. And it all funnels into the core being of Sinners, which is a horror film loaded with weighty metaphor. Much as Coogler lets the carnage flow, he always couples it to bold ideas. There is consideration of all the ways the past haunts people, especially those who have suffered oppression, and how rigid, institutionalized hatred rises up to violently halt progress. It is about the ways different people emerge from hardship, sometimes exacting the same hardship on others once they’re loosed from it, and the allure and danger of assimilation. It is about all these things, in succession and all at once. Coogler’s ambitious messaging and his fierce, genre storytelling entwine in a perfectly syncopated dance, and it’s thrilling to see.

The craft of Sinners is impeccable. In addition to Jordan’s sharp, magnetic work in the dual lead roles, there’s strong work across the cast, with Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, and Wunmi Mosaku as standouts. The luminous, evocative cinematography of Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the music of Ludwig Göransson, and the overall sound design all fortify Coogler’s already masterful art. The only real misstep is the insertion of needless flashback cut-ins during the third act to earlier plot points that were memorable enough the first time around. If that’s a concession to mass audience appeal that Coogler feels is needed to balance out the film’s most enlivening and audacious moments, led by the spectacular set piece when a character named Sammie (Miles Caton) first plays his guitar in the juke joint, then so be it. It’s easy enough to see the audience accommodation as just one more piece of Coogler’s astonishing showmanship. Whatever sins he commits are minor and forgivable, no repenting required.