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Sinners · written by Ryan Coogler · 2025
Scene 108 of 110 · ≈ 2 min on screen · Act three
In 1932 Mississippi, gifted sharecropper-bluesman Sammie Moore wants to make a life in the blues beyond his preacher father's rules, but the opening night of his cousins' juke joint becomes a siege by a vampire offering the community belonging at the price of its freedom.
The legend and prologue frame Sammie's segregated Delta life under his father's church and the twins' shadow.
Sammie wants the freedom, recognition, and musical life he imagines beyond the plantation.
He leaves the plantation with the twins, enters the wider Delta, and helps build their juke joint.
Sammie learns the blues is sacred, meets the room's people, and tries to claim a place among musicians and lovers.
His performance unites the juke with ancestral music and gives him the belonging and voice he wanted.
The music attracts Remmick's vampires, who take the juke's people and force Sammie to pay for the freedom he tasted.
Sammie wounds Remmick with the silver guitar resonator while Smoke stakes him at sunrise, freeing the connected vampires.
Smoke and Sammie return to the mill in daylight, and Smoke sends Sammie home with the broken guitar neck.
Smoke arms himself with wartime weapons and destroys Hogwood's armed crew when they arrive to reclaim the mill.
Sammie reaches the church house still bloodied and dazed from the night's violence.
This scene
Sammie enters to find everyone in their Sunday Best, mostly cotton, bleached white fabrics. His father Jedidiah wearing black.
CHILDREN’S CHOIR
This little light of mine, I’m
gonna let it shine, this little
light of mine, I’m gonna let it
shine...
Jedidiah makes eye contact with Sammie: his look holding shock, shame, and pride in equal parts.
The children keep singing, but murmurs of confusion from the congregation poke through the spiritual.
JEDIDIAH
Come son.
He extends his arm from beyond the pulpit. Sammie sees this gesture and begins to cry.
JEDIDIAH (CONT’D)
My son has felt the call of sin.
You see what it gets you? But the
Lord calls upon us to be fishers
of men who sin and show them the
way.
Sammie walks into the open arms of his father and begins to break down, clinging to his father.
JEDID IAH (CONT’D)
I want you to swear to me, and
swear before this congregation, to
leave those sinning ways where
they lie.
Samuel nods.
JEDIDIAH (CONT’D)
I want you make the promise right
now.
Jedidiah turns Sammie to the crowd.
JEDIDIAH (CONT’D)
Sing Samuel, but sing not for the
Devil. Sing for the Lord.
Jedidiah turns Samuel to the congregation.
SAMUEL
Steal away... steal away
steal away to Jesus.
JEDIDIAH
My prodigal son has returned.
SAMUEL
Steal away... steal away
steal away to Jesus.
We go tight on Sammie’s eyes still swollen with tears as he belts out his tune-
Jedidiah turns to Sammie, seein g the guitar neck still in his hand.
JEDIDIAH
Drop the guitar Samuel. In the
name of God!
Sammie hears his father, but struggles. Tears well in his eyes.
JEDIDIAH (CONT’D)
Swear to never again answer the
devils call. I know some of ya’ll
out there hear him talking, the
call of whisky, the call of slick
talking mens, and loose womens,
you can let them call and not
answer! YOU CAN TELL THEM MY EARS,
MY HEART, MY BODY, MY SOUL, MY
VOICE, BELONGETH TO THE LORD.
Sammie winces, and we cut to-