Seemingly every spring brings a critical and commercial hit that enthralls the cinematic community and challenges awards voters to find room for it come Oscar season. Sometimes that movie is Everything Everywhere All at Once; sometimes it’s Challengers. This year, it’s Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, currently riding high off headlines about its historically small second-weekend drop at the box office: It fell a mere 6 percent, which basically never happens. (Somewhere around 50 percent is more typical.)
Sinners’s massive word-of-mouth is the story of the spring, and it has cemented Coogler’s place as the heir to Christopher Nolan — a director who parlayed superhero success into his own distinct brand of ambitious adult blockbusters. It was Nolan who, over a decade ago, indirectly spurred the Academy to expand the Best Picture field in the hopes of bringing bigger tentpoles into the Oscar fold, and Coogler could be on track to become the latest beneficiary. Recent seasons have seen films like Wicked and Top Gun: Maverick earn seats in the Best Picture category off the back of boffo box office, and neither of them had the pedigree that Coogler, whose three previous films earned 13 total Oscar nominations, brings to Sinners.
Now, there’s an obvious caveat that we need to handle right away: Sinners is a vampire thriller and an unapologetically pulpy one at that. It’s a sexy, sweaty, occasionally messy movie — hardly the type of film you imagine when you think “future Oscar nominee.” But as a pundit, I try to remind myself that the boundaries of what constitutes an “Oscar movie” have expanded rapidly over the past few years. We’re living in a world where EEAAO can win the biggest prize, where Barbie and The Zone of Interest can sit alongside each other in Best Picture, and where The Substance can receive major nominations. This necessitates an open mind on the part of prognosticators. Now, the only rubric for whether something is an Oscar movie is, Are people responding to it? And unquestionably, people are responding to Sinners. It’s too early in the calendar to make any guarantees about the way next season will shake out, but I will say this: If by January there are ten stronger Best Picture contenders, we’re in for a hell of a year.
Like all commercially inclined contenders, Sinners will have to nail a move I like to call “the prestige pivot,” convincing voters it’s not just a good time at the movies but a serious work of art worth considering. Helpfully, even the most casual viewer can tell that Sinners is not “just” a vampire movie. Coogler’s clearly got a lot on his mind — Black culture being captured and commodified, Black creators’ ambivalent relationship with white money, even the shared links between Black and Irish history — and these meaty themes should help the film transcend the Academy’s traditional squeamishness toward horror. It matters, too, that Sinners is a wholly original story, one so personally important to Coogler that he negotiated a deal for its rights to revert back to him in 25 years. Crucially, after a string of inexplicably negative trade headlines around its opening-weekend gross, the film has already become a cause. This week, Variety’s Clayton Davis laid down the gauntlet, all but demanding voters take it seriously as an Oscar movie: “Sinners doesn’t ask for the Academy’s vote. It demands a reflection.”
Assuming Sinners can pierce the veil separating prestige and commerce, the film’s strongest plays will likely come in the craft categories. Given the subject matter, nominations in Sound and Original Song seem probable, with “I Lied to You,” the Raphael Saadiq co-write that soundtracks the film’s standout sequence, feeling like the best bet in the latter. Production designer Hannah Beachler, costume designer Ruth E. Carter, and composer Ludwig Göransson all won Oscars for their work on Coogler’s Black Panther, and all three should be in the mix again. (Carter may deserve another trophy just for the getups in that midcredits scene.) They could be joined by editor Michael P. Shawver, whose unconventional rhythms ramp up the tension, and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, whose widescreen vistas convey the beauty of the Black South.
As with most blockbusters, acting recognition will be harder. Michael B. Jordan does fine work subtly differentiating the twins Smoke and Stack, but that kind of action-hero performance rarely finds favor from the Academy. There may be a lane in Supporting Actor for 20-year-old Miles Caton, a true discovery who could benefit from the fact that, like many recent supporting nominees, he’s actually the film’s lead. But given Oscar’s usual reticence toward nominating young men, I wonder if the stronger play might be Delroy Lindo, who plays a grizzled bluesman. Not only does Lindo have a solid case for the career-achievement nomination that eluded him for Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, there’s history on his side: Coogler’s films previously garnered noms for veterans Sylvester Stallone of Creed and Angela Bassett of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Then there’s the new Oscar category for Best Casting. When I ask casting directors what qualities they would like the trophy to reward, some say a well-balanced ensemble, some say discoveries, and others mention the degree of difficulty in finding actors who can also sing and dance. Sinners has all three, which could make it a contender for the inaugural year of the category — especially as its casting director, Francine Maisler, is an industry legend who’s worked on over a dozen Best Picture nominees, including back-to-back winners 12 Years a Slave and Birdman.
If you’re looking for reasons to be bearish, you can find some. Consider the case of another Black auteur working in the horror space, Jordan Peele. After winning Original Screenplay for Get Out, Peele’s follow-ups Us and Nope were both blanked by the Academy. Like Sinners, those films were hugely successful efforts released outside the usual Oscar corridor, and despite the efforts of critics’ groups, each got lost in the year-end shuffle. There will also be questions about whether Sinners packs enough emotional impact to hit voters in their hearts, typically a necessary quality for a major contender. Furthermore, as the Academy grows ever more global, Sinners’s relatively paltry international gross ($40 million to date, compared to about $135 million domestically) could be a sign that non-U.S. voters may not respond to it in the same way.
However, it’s equally valid to note that Us and Nope employed far more slippery metaphors than Sinners, whose meanings should be easier for Oscar voters to get a handle on. The emotion issue could be alleviated if enough viewers stick around for the midcredits scene, which adds unexpected poignancy and sends the viewer out on a wistful note.
The question of whether Sinners can not just crack Best Picture but become a true top-shelf contender is largely an issue of timing, and can’t be answered today. If Coogler is indeed the next Nolan, is Sinners his Inception, which got into Picture and Screenplay and won a few craft trophies? Is it his Dunkirk, which earned the filmmaker his long-awaited directing nod? Or is it his Oppenheimer, the box-office juggernaut that simply becomes undeniable? The latter may be too optimistic, if only because enough voters could feel that the director, who is not yet 40, may still need to pay his dues. But this early in the year, who can say for sure?
What I can say is that the film should likely benefit from an underrated factor in the awards race: studio support. Warner Bros. chairs Pam Abdy and Michael DeLuca received plenty of anonymous backbiting over the deal they gave Coogler, and now that their gamble has paid off, they have all the incentive in the world to finance a year-end victory lap. It’s not just “For Your Consideration,” it’s also “Told Ya So.”