Here’s my analysis of Sinners that I put on Letterboxd + some additional commentary💕🩵🎶
I absolutely adored Sinners and was surprised to find so much of my own culture reflected in the film. As such I wanted to give some insight into the Irish vampire Remmick and his connection to its themes, its culture and its story.
Before I go into explaining I want to note that I live in Dublin and am a dual citizen of both the US and Ireland with family and cultural ties to both nations. It is because of my own history and culture that made me resonate and feel so seen by Coogler’s writing of Remmick, the main vampire villain of the movie.
I should also note that Remmick could be a nod to the Irish story of Abhartach, a legend about a man killed who rises from the dead demanding blood. The story has many versions such as Dearg Due, that most likely influenced the Irish writer, Bram Stoker, in writing Dracula.
From the very first scene that Remmick is in, where he is getting chased by the Choctaw vampire hunters, it is obvious the amount of research Coogler has done. For those who don’t know, the Choctaw Nation and Ireland have a very long history dating back to the Famine, a genocide against Ireland by the British. Wherein the Choctaw Nation donated $5,000 in today’s money not long after the Trail of Tears to help the country. Since then both peoples have maintained a relationship, with Ireland paying back the Choctaw Nation for their help. There’s even a memorial down in Cork to commemorate our relationship.
It felt ironic watching this scene for the first time knowing this long history but looking back it perfectly sets up the movie’s main theme surrounding Remmick. That’s because in this scene Remmick is pointedly finding safety in the house of a KKK member, the literal embodiment of white supremacy. Remmick is doing what many Irish Americans did at the time, turning their back on community in an effort to appeal to an American standard of whiteness (Irishmen hadn’t been considered white before this time period), eventually becoming that standard of whiteness themselves. Knowing this, the Choctaw men hunting him seems more like mercy kill than an actual hunting. Seeing it this way, it could even be mirroring a scene later in the film between Annie and Smoke.
I think it’s important to note that the core theme of this film is how culture and community are linked and what happens to people who’ve lost their culture and community. That is what Remmick, and what so many Irish Americans want and are cut off from. When he sees Sammy and the Juke Joint dancing with the past, present, and future spirits, he sees a tie to his own culture that he has lost. Except instead of wanting a mutual consensual connection between himself and Black Americans, he wants to take it over in a desperate attempt to get something that’s already lost.
When he sings ‘Pick Poor Robin Clean’ to try and get into the Juke Joint, he is imitating a song written and sung by Black Americans, taking it over, gentrifying it, and trying to use Black American culture for his own gain.
Though he doesn’t just sing this song, in fact he sings two songs that I have heard my whole life and was very shocked to hear in this movie. The first is ‘Will You Go Lassie, Go?’ and it is sung to the white passing character Mary before the vampires kill her (it also has an Appalachian version called ‘The Wild Mountain Thyme’ which was brought over by Scottish & Irish immigrants). The song is an old folk song about a young man yearning for his love who has gone away. Though Scottish in origin it was reinterpreted by Francis McPeake and gifted to a woman named Maggi Pierce who left Ireland for America. In that sense it is also a mourning song for someone who is going far away, never to return. For those who don’t know, an ‘American Wake’ was a practice in Ireland for mourning someone leaving for America because they would not be able to have a funeral in their home country once they died.
When Remmick and the other vampires sing this for Mary, it is a song mourning a community already gone. He is a dead man, singing a mourning song, in a land that calls for funerals back home.
From this point on, Remmick grows his group of vampires larger and larger, trying to mimic the community they had when he wasn’t with them. They sing and preform the song ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’, a rebel song about the oppression and colonization Britain exerts over Ireland. That being said, Remmick is the only one Irish dancing, all of the other vampires are just surrounding him without any real dances of their own. I saw a few people point out that they were dancing counter clockwise which could be a reference to Irish Sidhe/Fairy Folk who trick humans into dancing forever by going counter clockwise (though this is just speculation). There is also a lack of past and future spirits with them as they are neither dead nor alive. Their connection to their community is gone and their culture too.
I've seen some Irish people say that choosing these songs is lazy because of how widely known they are, but I disagree. Remmick is a man cut off from his culture, so it makes sense that the songs he knows are a bit superficial. I also agree with casting Jack O'Connell instead of an Irish person born and raised in country because I think he has a better understanding of Irish people in the diaspora and their relationship with Irish culture.
The last song we hear from Remmick after this is ‘Pick Poor Robin Clean’ again, only this time with all the people he has taken and transformed from the Juke Joint. He is, without intending to, the embodiment of white supremacy and how it takes and takes and takes.
When he fights Sammy, he does what many Irish Americans do, use their people’s past subjection to justify their oppression and bigotry over others. They know enough about oppression to knock on the door and peek inside, but because of their willingness to assimilate into American whiteness, the only community they have left to be a part of is one founded and controlled by white supremacy.
Before, Remmick was most likely someone like Sammy, a Filí able to use music to gather community, which is why he uses it to gather more and more vampires, yet he doesn’t understand that this is doing the exact opposite of building the community he yearns for.
In As Gaeilge, the Irish language, there’s a saying, “Tír gan Teanga, Tír gan Anam” which translates to “A country without a language is a country without a soul”. At no point in the movie does Remmick even speak Irish and the rest of the time he is switching between accents whenever it seems beneficial. I see Remmick, and many people who claim to be Irish American without any actual connection to Ireland, as the embodiment of this saying. They are people who have lost their language, their culture, their people, and as such have lost their soul to hate pretending to be community.
When Remmick is finally killed by the sun and burned in a giant cauldron of fire, it may seem to some that he is being punished and sent to hell. This is not how I interpreted his death, having had prior knowledge of Irish folktales as well as just attending Bealtaine at the Hill of Uisneach in Westmeath a couple weeks ago. For those who don’t know Bealtaine is an old Irish festival celebrating the coming summer, the return of the sun and life itself. I view Remmick’s death as a reflection of this festival (& other Irish pagan festivals) and his return to his ancestors after finally embracing the sun once more (just like how Annie said vampires are cut off from this connection, he is finally free to have it once more). Below is a picture I took at Bealtaine that I think looks very similar to Remmick’s fire in the movie.
Sinners is a movie about what happens when you allow hate to walk right through your door and how it isolates you from everything you hold dear. When Mary and Stack speak with an older Sammy, Stack mentions how the music hasn’t felt ‘real’ since that night, having lost the connection that living and dying gives to the evolution of his people.
Setting aside Remmick, I still absolutely loved this film, and he is by no means it’s major highlight. The way Coogler depicts Black American culture, its beauty, tenderness, and relation to music is masterful and I sincerely hope this film gets all the awards it deserves. I won’t go deep into his depiction of Black Americans and Black American culture because it is not my culture to speak on, and this analysis is already way too long. I will say though that this film is a masterclass in how culture and community relate to characters and their motivations. I think it’ll go down as one of the best horror films of the genre and I can’t wait to see what else Ryan Coogler and everyone who worked on this film makes.
