Wake Up, Dead Man: Whodunnit Comedy with Heart

Commenting on the grandiose architecture of a church, the young priest tells a visitor, "You can almost feel His presence."

"Whose?" asks the visitor. Uncomfortable pause. "Oh."

The young priest, Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor), has been accused of murdering his superior Monsignor Wick (James Brolin) during Mass. The visitor is Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), convinced at their first meeting that the young priest isn't a guilty man pretending innocence, but an innocent man who appears to be guilty. About religion, though, Blanc is dismissive: "God is a fiction."

Cracking Blanc's attitude to religion is a story that underlies the plot.

The sacrament of confession punctuates the plot five times. The first confession is played for laughs as Father Jud hears TMI from Wick. In a replay of that situation, the young priest fights back, confessing that he has snooped around to learn all the ways that Wick is abusing his power over his followers. Once a boxer, Fr. Jud has sworn to fight for Jesus with his hands open in love, not with fists. His resolve is tested.

The last two confessions are spoilers, but number three is the heart of this funny, macabre murder mystery. It has nothing to do with whodunnit, and there's nothing funny about it.

It happens in a phone conversation with Laurie, office-manager at the excavation company that opened a crypt. Who ordered that work? Blanc wants Fr. Jud to find out ASAP. But Laurie seems to be in a chatty mood, and Fr. Jud listens patiently while Blanc rolls his eyes.

Suddenly, Laurie stops. When we she speaks again, she's sobbing, and Fr. Jud takes the phone and confession to another room. It's after dark by the time Laurie accepts forgiveness and finds the name they needed, but Blanc's attitude has changed. "You're really good at this!" he tells his young client.

What Blanc has learned carries over into a key decision he makes during the inevitable Big Reveal.

As much as I laughed and thrilled to all the old mystery tropes - long shadows, a creepy crypt, a sudden storm, and an impossible "locked-room" murder - it's Fr. Jud's solemn and loving pronouncement of absolution to those who desperately need it that I've taken away from the movie. I'm tearing up now, a week later.

The Joy of Singers & SINNERS

When the lights came up after the credits for Sinners, the elderly black man beside me, who had seen me gasp, laugh, and cry throughout the movie, said, "So, I suppose you're a blues man?"

"I am now," I replied.

It's true: to my collection of hundreds of recordings, I've recently added the first two blues albums, both by Buddy Guy, the revered singer-guitarist who appears late in the movie. I've been listening to them over and over, beginning to appreciate what I've been missing.

Sure, Sinners tells a story of vampires who crash a party at a Mississippi juke joint during the Jim Crow era. They do make a bloody mess, bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase "sundown town." But the tentpoles of this film are music and dance, and, like Blues songs about tough life, the overall effect is joy.

The first words of the movie are voiced by a woman who tells us about music's power to open a door between our world and the spirit world, between past and present, between good and evil. Take that as the thesis sentence for the movie. We will hear the blues, and we will also hear Irish folk music from another race of down-trodden people.

Then there's the character Sammie. The charismatic actor Michael B. Jordan was the draw to this movie, playing both "Smoke" and "Stack," Sammie's uncles. But it's Miles Caton as Sammie who stole the show. Sammie's a teenager, son of a preacher who forbids him to play guitar or sing the blues. Sammie's uncles think he might be a good singer for the opening bash at their new juke joint. So it's sort of an audition when, riding shotgun beside his uncles, he strums guitar and sings. The fullness and maturity of the sound from this deferential, unimposing young man is so unexpected that his uncle gasps, turns to gape at his passenger, then smiles broadly. That was my reaction, and others' too. Caton is now hailed as the "breakout" star of the movie.

Caton admits in an interview that he got the part before he understood SINNERS is a vampire movie.

His is the voice that cracks open the spirit world. Like songs in the best musical theatre tradition, the words of his blues number are very specific to his story:

You threw me a Bible on that Mississippi road
See, I love you Papa, you did all you can do
They say the truth hurts, so I lied to you
Yes I lied to you
I love the blues

It starts as voice and guitar, but ramps up to a surreal dance number. As the camera roams the dance floor, the dancers seem unfazed when they're infiltrated by musicians and dancers from Africa, China, past and future (there's a rap DJ with turntable).

Then a trio of white people ask to be invited in. They're musicians, too, says their spokesman Remmick (Jack O'Connell). He says they're not Klansmen: "We believe in equality." What that really means is, every new vampire joins a "community" of vampires who share Remmick's mind -- including his accent and movements. The trio sings a little ditty about eating a man. Smoke and Stack turn them away, but they lurk in the woods and pick off guests who leave the party, one by one.

Soon, Remmick has enough vampires to make up the cast of Riverdance, and that's what they do. He leads an Irish dance tune, "The Road to Dublin," and the chorus encircles the club doing their Irish jig.

At this point, I was laughing and crying -- one, because it was so incongruous to see blood-smeared black people jigging, and, two, because it was both outrageous and fitting -- perfection!

The film score by Ludwig Göransson is nearly continuous -- bluegrass or blues guitar playing behind images when not accompanying voices. Songs performed by women in the cast express their tangled relations with Smoke, Stack, and Sammie.

Director Ryan Coogler has made a great movie that busts out of one genre to another: music is at the heart of this horror movie. You can watch SINNERS for the thrill of a bloody horror suspense film, and find yourself exhilarated by the season's best musical.