What Is Sinners About? Ryan Coogler Film Has 16 Oscar Noms

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Even if Sinners doesn’t win a single Academy Award this year, it will still make history.

Directed by Ryan Coogler, the horror film earned a whopping 16 Oscar nominations, making it both the most-nominated movie this year and the most-nominated movie ever made.

“With all respect to the Academy — and I love so many people involved — my award is the opportunity to have this job: to write a script, get a crew together, hire union jobs, contribute to people’s health care and their families,” Coogler told Variety in February. “The fact that I have this job, and can continue to have it, is the greatest gift.”

Even before awards season started, Sinners was making headlines as a rare original film — not a sequel or based on preexisting IP — to clean up at the box office, grossing more than $369 million worldwide.

When the Academy Awards air on Sunday, March 15, the movie could become the most decorated film in Oscars history. Keep scrolling to learn more about Sinners:

What Is ‘Sinners’ About?

Set in 1930s Mississippi, Sinners follows twin brothers Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” Moore (both played by Michael B. Jordan) as they return home after several years spent living in Chicago. The pair decide to open a juke joint with help from the community, including Smoke’s wife, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) and blues musician Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo).

On opening night, the musicians’ performance attracts a group of white onlookers led by an Irish man named Remmick (Jack O’Connell). Smoke and Stack soon find out that Remmick and his compatriots are actually vampires (who also happen to be members of the Ku Klux Klan). The twins spend the rest of the night fighting off the undead as well as the KKK, which had been planning to attack the juke joint at dawn.

While Sinners is a horror movie, it’s also an exploration of the history of blues music as well as the reality of life for Black Americans in the Jim Crow South.

“Very often, and rightfully so, that part of time and that physical location in the United States is a place that’s associated with a lot of pain, a lot of shame, a lot of discomfort, but to completely look away from it is to not look at what else was there,” Coogler told IndieWire in April 2025. “The resilience, the brilliance, the fortitude, and also the art, the artistic wonder, the cultural wonder.”

What Is Sinners About — Michael B. Jordan, Wunmi Mosaku, Hailee Steinfeld, Michael B. Jordan and Omar Benson Miller in ‘Sinners.’ Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

Who Stars in ‘Sinners’?

Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers Smoke and Stack in Sinners, while Miles Caton makes his screen debut as their younger cousin Sammie. Wunmi Mosaku appears as Smoke’s estranged wife, Annie, with Hailee Steinfeld starring as Stack’s ex-girlfriend Mary. Veteran actor Delroy Lindo plays harmonica player Delta Slim, while Jayme Lawson plays singer Pearline.

The brothers’ other colleagues in the juke joint are shopkeepers Grace and Bo (Li Jun Li and Yao, respectively) and bouncer Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller). Poet and musician Saul Williams stars as Sammie’s father, pastor Jedidiah Moore, while Nathaniel Arcand plays the Choctaw vampire hunter Chayton.

Jack O’Connell appears as Remmick, an Irish immigrant and vampire who turns a local couple — KKK members Bert (Peter Dreimanis) and Joan (Lola Kirke) — into vampires as well.

Real-life blues legend Buddy Guy also has a cameo as a much older version of Sammie, seen in the year 1992.

What Are Critics Saying About ‘Sinners’?

Sinners holds a 97 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a 96 percent audience score. The film was also named one of the best of 2025 by numerous critics, including The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis and The New Yorker’s Richard Brody, both of whom ranked it No. 1.

“Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is a big-screen exultation — a passionate, effusive praise song about life and love, including the love of movies,” Dargis wrote. “Set in Jim Crow Mississippi, it is a genre-defying, mind-bending fantasia overflowing with great performances, dancing vampires and a lot of ideas about love and history.”

Brody, for his part, praised Michael B. Jordan and Miles Caton’s performances along with the rest of the cast, writing, “Jordan brings [Smoke and Stack] to distinctive life with his powerful presence and a virtuosity that wears its effort lightly. The entire cast carries the action with fierce, pressurized commitment and delivers the characters’ lofty thoughts and sharp-edged talk forthrightly; their performances feel conjured, not acted. Caton, a deep-voiced singer with no prior screen credits, endows Sammie with a preternatural sense of purpose and poise; it’s an extraordinary debut.”

How Many Oscar Nominations Did ‘Sinners’ Receive?

With 16 nods, Sinners earned the most nominations of any film at the 2026 Academy Awards and broke the record for most nominations of any film in history. The previous record was 14 nominations, held by 1997’s Titanic and 1950’s All About Eve.

In addition to Best Picture and Best Directing for Ryan Coogler, Sinners scored acting nominations for Michael B. Jordan (lead actor), Delroy Lindo (supporting actor) and Wunmi Mosaku (supporting actress). Coogler also earned a nomination for Best Writing (Original Screenplay).

The film is also up for Best Music (Score) for Ludwig Göransson; Best Music (Original Song) for Görranson and Raphael Saadiq; Best Casting for Francine Maisler; Best Sound for Chris Welcker, Benjamin A. Burtt, Felipe Pacheco, Brandon Proctor and Steve Boeddeker; Best Costume Design for Ruth E. Carter; Best Production Design for Hannah Beachler and Monique Champagne; Best Cinematography for Autumn Durald Arkapaw; Best Makeup and Hairstyling for Ken Diaz, Mike Fontaine and Shunika Terry; Best Film Editing for Michael P. Shawver and Best Visual Effects for Michael Ralla, Espen Nordahl, Guido Wolter and Donnie Dean.