“Sinners” - Pretty good-ish.

One moment, Selma Hayek is doing a seductive dance in her underwear while wielding a large snake, George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino looking on. The next moment, she is a b-movie vampire attacking the strip club’s patrons. It’s a very jarring shift, instantly transitioning from an intriguing crime drama to another of director Robert Rodriguez’s horror pulp fetishes. From Dusk Till Dawn made us wonder if Rodriguez had been drinking the fake movie blood from his sets. The new film Sinners, from director Ryan Coogler, performs a similar transition, though not so terribly executed.

To be sure, Sinners is a far superior film to From Dusk Till Dawn, including when it turns into a survive-the-monsters movie. Sinners doesn’t completely hide the monster element like Dawn does. Sinners begins with opening narration – notably as unnecessary as all opening narration – talking about how music can link eras and generations at a supernatural level. This is followed by a scene depicting a young man named Sammie (Miles Caton) walking into his father’s small church, covered in blood and clutching the neck of his destroyed guitar, interspersed with flashes of a grisly night featuring something demonic.

Then, the movie cuts to twenty-four hours earlier and the supernatural is all but forgotten for the next hour-ish of the film. Twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) left home to fight in World War I, spent some years in Chicago working for Al Capone, and have now returned to their home. Together, they plan to open a juke joint (nightclub and speakeasy) to serve the local sharecroppers. For that first hour-ish, the movie meticulously develops multiple characters and various relationships, including a brief mention of the Ku Klux Klan when Smoke and Stack purchase land from the local white mayor.

The highlight of all of this development is the group of characters Smoke and Stack assemble to staff their juke joint for that night’s grand opening. In addition to Sammie are Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) to cook the food, Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo (Yao) Chow to tend bar, Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) to play piano, Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) to bounce the door, and, of course, Sammie to play guitar. Each character brings a unique element to the situation and all of them have a history with the twins. In addition to the staff are two vixens in Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) and Pearline (Jayme Lawson), both married, but both discarding their vows for at least the night.

For that first hour-ish, there is all sorts of intrigue in the air. Everyone in town knows the twins and their mob-linked reputations from their time in Chicago. Where did they get all that Irish beer, Italian wine, and satchels of cash? And what of the local Klansmen, whom the mayor claims no longer exist *wink wink*? Are there two different gangs looking for the twins? Then there are the ladies, particularly the two with the unseen husbands. What kind of trouble do they bring to the foray? On top of all that, we still have that whole thing about music and the supernatural. Lest you forget about it, there’s a scene with Stack and Sammie that practically smacks you in the face with it. I can’t stress enough how truly engaging this entire hour-ish is and it’s a shame we live in the timeline where the second half of this movie takes a hard right turn onto a very different road.

That’s not to say the second half isn’t also good. Unlike From Dusk Till Dawn, Sinners doesn’t immediately become a trashy survive-until-dawn vampire flick. Instead, Sinners eases the audience into a quality survive-until-dawn vampire flick. Yes, it gets pretty bonkers, including plenty of blood and gore. But it also has some really good scenes mixed in. Some really, really good scenes, particularly two featuring some fantastic music, choreography, and imagery. And the performances from the actors only get better (they were quite good during the first half), serving to elevate every scene.

The flaw in the film is that it discards nearly all of the first half’s build up by making the vampires entirely new characters. I don’t fault the movie for steering that direction, but why didn’t they make the Klan guys the vampires? That would have tied everything together nicely, commenting on the very nature of the Jim Crow South and the Klan being vampirish, both figuratively and literally. That missed opportunity seems almost like Coogler pulled his punch.

The film also whiffs a smidge by not bringing the music angle all the way back around. There are hints throughout, even that the head vampire Remmick (Jack O’Connell) is supernaturally drawn to Sammie through Sammie’s music. It might seem like a small nit, but I would have liked just one or two more quick scenes, or even just sentences, from Remmick to tie it all together. I really would like to visit that other timeline.

But it’s really difficult not to like the movie we got in this timeline. From the acting, to the visuals, to the music, to some tongue-in-cheek vampire lore (a garlic test and playing up that vampires must be invited in, to name two examples), to some surprisingly spicy erotic scenes, to some very good cinematography, to very good action scenes - there’s a little something for everyone, even the horror pulp fans.

Rating: Ask for two dollars-ish back.