Sinners · written by Ryan Coogler · 2025

The group gathers stakes and garlic while Annie asks Smoke to free her if she is bitten.

Scene 89 of 110 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Save the Cat: Break into Three
Annie
Smoke
Pe Arline
Delta Slim
Grace
Sammie

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 1:37 into a 2:07 film

The story so farBefore scene 89

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.

Scenes 1–15
The legend and prologue frame Sammie's segregated Delta life under his father's church and the twins' shadow.
Scenes 16–18
Sammie wants the freedom, recognition, and musical life he imagines beyond the plantation.
Scenes 19–46
He leaves the plantation with the twins, enters the wider Delta, and helps build their juke joint.
Scenes 47–58
Sammie learns the blues is sacred, meets the room's people, and tries to claim a place among musicians and lovers.
Scene 59
His performance unites the juke with ancestral music and gives him the belonging and voice he wanted.
Scene 60
Remmick, Joan, and Bert arrive outside the opening-night juke after hearing Sammie's music.
Scene 64
Smoke refuses the drifters entry, turning a suspicious visit into the siege of the juke joint.
Scene 65
The survivors choose to stay inside and let Mary investigate the outsiders, entering the vampire problem on their own terms.
Scene 73
Smoke and Sammie argue over whether music is a respectable calling or the life that makes Sammie feel free.
Scene 76
Smoke catches Mary drinking Stack's blood; she survives his gunfire and declares that the whole room will be killed.
Scene 82
Stack dies in Smoke's arms, and Smoke names him the best thing about himself.
Just before
Scene 86
Cornbread returns changed, tries to enter without an invitation, and is shot by Smoke when Annie identifies him as a vampire.
Scene 87
Stack's transformed body knocks from the back room, bursts through the door, and escapes after Annie burns him with pickled garlic.
Scene 88
The survivors learn what vampires are, accept that Stack cannot be restored, and promise to resist the night together.

89INT. DANCE FLOOR - JUKE JOINT - LUMBER MILL - NIGHT

QUICK SUCCESSION OF SHOTS

Sammie, Smoke, and Delta Slim gather wood and begin to break it down into stakes.

In the kitchen area, Annie, Grace, and Pearline gather garlic.

Annie throws bones. Reads them.

ANNIE

(to herself)

No no no no.

She throws them again.

Smoke ties some to his rifles like bayonets. Annie pulls him to the side, holding one of the stakes.

ANNIE (CONT’D)

I want you to promise me

somethin’.

Sm oke looks at her.

ANNIE (CONT’D)

If I get bit by one of them, you

promise right now to free me

before I turn.

SMOKE

What you mean free you?

Annie takes Smoke’s hand in hers

ANNIE

Don’t let one of them things bite

me. I got somebody I waiting for

me on that other side. They

waitin’ for you too. That’s why

I’ll do the same for you. You

understand?

Annie places the stake near her heart. Smoke drops the stake to the ground, realizing what she’s insinuating.

Pearline walks into the gambling room where she sees GAMBLER 2 laying dead in a pool of blood.

Pearline screams.

PE ARLINE

Sammie, Smoke!

The group descends on Pearline. Smoke looks down at Gambler 2’s body.

SMOKE

He got cut in the face, but that

ain’t gon’ bleed like this.

Smoke reaches down to check his pulse.

DELTA SLIM

Don’t touch him, man.

GRACE

Who did this? Was it Stack? Or