Mike Flanagan’s Sinners Review Made Me Realize How Similar The Film Is To His 87% RT Netflix Show

Mike Flanagan‘s recent review of Sinners secretly highlights how the movie is similar to one of his best Netflix shows in more ways than one. For a long time, Mike Flanagan had an incredible run as a television showrunner for several hit shows on Netflix. While some of Mike Flanagan’s Netflix shows, like The Midnight Club, failed to achieve the same highs of commercial success as others, almost all the series he has helmed have impressive Rotten Tomatoes scores. After his long tenure with Netflix, Flanagan has returned to making movies, with his highly anticipated The Life of Chuck releasing soon.

Every once in a while, Mike Flanagan also shares his insights on new and old additions to the horror genre. The director often writes detailed reviews for the movies he loves on Letterboxd, which has helped him amass more than 100k followers on the reviewing site. After watching Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Flanagan, like many, could not help but sing praises about how incredible the film is. A closer look at his review, however, makes one realize that Sinners is thematically and narratively similar to one of his own highly acclaimed horror shows from Netflix.

Mike Flanagan Appreciated The Movie’s Use Of Vampirism As A Metaphor

In his review (via Letterboxd), Mike Flanagan first calls attention to Sinners‘ “terrific performances” and “jaw-dropping music sequences.” The director then highlights how the vampires in Sinners “are just a metaphorical wrapper for a story about racial and cultural identity, appropriation, and legacy.“ Flanagan’s insights on the film’s allegories are right on the money because it elevates itself above most mainstream vampire movies. Instead of merely portraying them as bloodthirsty monsters, the film adds a more humane layer to them by highlighting their desire to preserve their identity.

Jack O’Connell’s Remmick is the perfect example of this. He targets Sammie in the film because he believes Sammie’s ability to transcend all metaphysical boundaries with his music could help him connect with his lost loved ones and reclaim his fading cultural identity.

Other characters, like Wunmi Mosaku’s Annie, choose death over living till eternity because it means losing their racial and cultural identity to a hive mind that would force them to conform to Remmick’s utopian vision of a community. Sinners‘ memorable ending arc also ensures that, instead of the vampires, the racist members of the Ku Klux Klan are seen as the real villains.

Flanagan’s Review Highlights How Similar Sinners Is To Midnight Mass

Midnight Mass Also Avoids Portraying Vampires In A One-Dimensional Light

The central vampire characters in both Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass are initially terrifying. However, both eventually highlight how not all humans who turn into vampires are inherently evil. Evil are those who, even before becoming vampires, attempted to exploit their sense of power and control without controlling their urge to manipulate and harm others.

Vampirism in Midnight Mass represents the promise of Utopia and the integration of all religions into Christianity. While the Catholics celebrate characters, like Sheriff Hassan and Dr. Sarah Gunning, feel ostracized because religious integration would erase their distinct religious and sexual identity. Similarly, vampirism also promises a semblance of utopian freedom in Sinners but comes with the cost of erasing Black identity and culture into a hive mind led by an Irish vampire.

Midnight Mass Serves As The Perfect Companion Piece To Sinners

Viewers Who Have Watched One Should Certainly Check Out The Other

In terms of pace, Midnight Mass is relatively slower and takes time to find its feet. However, both Midnight Mass and Sinners gradually unveil the tapestry of their narratives before fully immersing viewers in their gory action and drama. Midnight Mass feels like the perfect companion piece to Sinners because it also uses the terror surrounding vampires as a vessel to raise many discussions surrounding morality, identity, trauma, and the loss of autonomy at the cost of immortality.

Both Sinners and the Mike Flanagan show also feature scenes where numerous human characters fall prey to the central vampire invasion before they truly understand what they are dealing with and the nature of their own desires and impulses. Owing to these similarities between the two, many viewers would likely have a good time watching them as companion pieces, where many themes and ideas transcend the boundaries that separate their distinct universes.