a thing that was so interesting about the vampires in Sinners is genuinely what huge losers they are. get bit and immediately start talking like the most annoying youth pastor you know.
which is a really cool choice because it emphasizes how deeply Off they are. there are obviously the big tells in their behavior, like Bo not reacting to a man getting mauled five feet away or Cornbread getting weird at the door, but the way they speak is also really off with the cadence of the movie the audience has gotten accustomed to. the characters are friends, family, they know each other enough to make jokes, trade barbs, argue, swear. they talk in an informal, natural way with each other. one bite later and it's "excuse me my brothers and sisters in the one race, the human race, won't you pretty please let me come inside to rejoice in your company 🥺"
the kkkouple that remmick turns first are a really effective storytelling shorthand. we know basically nothing about them pre-vampening except that they're trigger happy racists, so when you see them turn up all smiles at a Black juke joint parroting everything remmick says you immediately get a pretty solid grasp of what getting bit does to a motherfucker
obviously I'm arriving to this party really late and I've already seen almost every bit of this movie dissected down to the minutia, but I've not seen anyone talk about klanwife's line about how the vampires are "starting a new klan, built on love." crazy good line, made me figuratively need to take a seat. really cuts right to the heart of the dissonance between what mr. o'vampire says he believes and the nightmare bullshit that he's actually doing.
I keep thinking about the big vampire group song because it's like. god this scene is good. it circles back to my point about remmick being a loser, because getting a couple dozen new vampire thralls and using them to do an elaborately choreographed song and dance is peak loser shit.
but it's also horrifying, absolutely horrifying, for the living characters who are looking on because a.) they're watching their dead family and friends and neighbors, most of whom are covered in blood and visibly injured, get danced around like puppets and b.) it's the first time the characters are really getting a taste of the hivemind bullshit the audience has already been clued in on and c.) sure, they're just dancing for now, but they're realizing just how many hungry vampires are waiting outside to kill them at the first opportunity and take Sammie. so that's a nightmare for them.
so you could read that as a deliberate intimidation tactic on remmick's part, trying to overwhelm the survivors into giving up, but then you're like, okay, maybe in his mind this is a display of how good it is to be a vampire. isn't it good? doesn't it look fun? look how much fun we're having! you could come have fun too if you want! just let me in :3 I don't think that's impossible, that he'd be totally oblivious to how he comes across. the newly-turned vampires seem pretty bad at faking their interpersonal skills; all memory of how to act human beyond the most superficial level seems to really go out the window pretty immediately. remmick seems a little cannier than that, since we see him try to play on people's emotions more than once--appealing to the kkkouple's fear of the Choctaw to gain their shelter when he realizes they're klan, trying to lower Mary's guard by sympathizing with her over her dead mother, pressuring Grace by threatening her daughter. obviously some of those efforts are more successful than others, but he at least seems to have an ability to read the room that other vampires lack.
but it's also not a stretch at all to think he might sincerely be that clueless, because that whole song and dance number is remmick's whole thesis statement, which is that when he says he believes in "equality" he means that he'll kill anyone and turn them into one of his tools regardless of who they are. like sure, whatever, I'm willing to believe that he does sincerely find the klan objectionable, but he's also just packed full of shit. his version of equality is one where everyone's equal under him, acting out his own culture and history for his pleasure. thinks he's not racist because he doesn't care that Sammie's Black but still wants to take away everything that makes Sammie an individual and just keep the musical talent to perform a crude facsimile of being Irish.
and this is getting so long but that scene of all the vampires dancing in step in the dark, cold and washed out, is contrasted so well with the earlier scene inside the juke where everyone is warmly lit, revolving around Sammie but not beholden to him, dancing in their own styles side by side with spirits of the past and future blending different styles and cultures. that scene is such a gorgeous visualization of musical traditions persisting through time and place, connecting people across generations, growing and changing fluidly as people take inspiration from the past, while all of remmick's songs show people being very forcibly trapped in the past, unable to grow or move on. when he encounters something beautiful in the present all he can think to do is own it, destroy it, bend it into the shape of history. pathetic!
