It’s not the horror that unites the densely packed themes and worldbuilding in writer-director Ryan Coogler‘s first genre feature, Sinners, but the music. The opening preamble sets up the horror that won’t arrive until much later, establishing that, rarely, a musician comes along with talent so great that their music can pierce the veil between the living and the dead. That it can be a beacon for evil. That’s exactly what happens, of course, but it’s merely one component of Coogler’s engrossing epic that’s so ambitious in form and scale that it firmly holds you in its grip from the outset and never lets go.

The premise is deceptively simple: twins Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan in dual roles) return to their hometown in Mississippi, bringing their acquired wealth from their seven-year stint with mob life in Al Capone-era Chicago to start up a juke joint.