This year, the Oscar season prayer has a name, and it is “Sinners.”

With “Sinners,” writer-director Ryan Coogler, one of Hollywood’s most quietly seismic forces, steps into a genre long neglected by the Academy, and once again, reshapes the game. A slow-burn psychological horror film, “Sinners” is not just a pivot for Coogler — rather, it’s a proclamation.

For more than a decade, Coogler has been Hollywood’s quiet revolutionary — symbolizing, for the Black community, a figure akin to our very own Christopher Nolan. From chronicling the final hours of Oscar Grant’s life in “Fruitvale Station,” to reviving the “Rocky” franchise with “Creed,” to breaking barriers with the cultural juggernaut “Black Panther,” Coogler fuses personal and political storytelling with mass appeal like few others.

Now comes “Sinners,” a certified box-office hit and critical darling that stands to redefine both Coogler’s career and the Academy’s stale boundaries around horror.