A lot of hype has been generated, in a positive way, about this outlandish movie featuring vampires in the Deep South, of all places. Then I watched a reaction by Magic Magy and Laura, and the intricacies finally began to make sense.
By Emad Aysha
The movie is a bit overbaked but great nonetheless. Another plus point is that it has regenerated a very hackneyed and done-to-death genre, splicing it very nicely with a different set of cultural concerns.
The story is set in 1932 and begins with a bang, with a boy (Miles Caton as Sammie ‘Preacher Boy’ Moore) bursting in on a congregation after a conflagration with vampires. He was hired as a blues player by his two cousins, the Smokestack Twins, Elijah and Elias, played by Michael B. Jordan.
The trouble is that Sammie’s musical skills attract a wayward vampire, Remmick (Jack O’Connell), and his racist recruits. The twins themselves are trouble, having worked as mob enforcers for Capone in Chicago, and now making their way back to Mississippi to ‘invest’ in their local community. (Sin upon sin).
They buy a barn to turn it into a juke joint, not knowing they are falling into a KKK trap, something Remmick finds out from a young couple he tricks into inviting him in. They’re klan themselves and not coincidentally Remmick was being chased by redskins!
Talk about role-reversals. Natives also know evil when they see it. Like I said, it’s a lot to take in.
LOVE BITES: Sammie's love-interest Pearline is described appropriately as more than he can chew.
Jazz and blues players in this culture are seen as shamans who free beings from the corporeal world to commune with the spirit world, encompassing both the past and the future. That’s why Remmick needs Sammie with his soul trapped in his dead body.
To add to the complexity, the twins are reuniting with their women, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), who possesses voodoo knowledge, and Mary, a white girl played with brashness by the now-grown-up Hailee Steinfeld. These two women actually give the best performances in the movie.
Michael B. Jordan is great, mixing charisma with sympathy, but he eats up too much of the screentime, which makes it hard to focus on Miles Caton and his booming voice.
The movie also has too many endings, skipping to 1992 with the grown-up Sammie, along with extra singing by him from the past. The same problem that plagued The Batman and Alien: Romulus.
Again, I’ll have to thank Magic Magy and Laura for explaining why Elijah gets himself killed massacring the Klan, at the end, after surviving the vampire assault. It was his fate to die because if it weren’t for Remmick, he wouldn’t have known about the trap set for them.
Remmick himself is a tragic figure. He’s disarmingly charming, played expertly by Jack O’Connell, and is a minority because he's Irish. His people also use music and song to conjure spirits, and his Christian faith didn’t protect him from land seizures.
He creates his version of an equalitarian cornucopia with the original customers at the juke barn, but unites them around evil instead of fun and relief. He doesn’t use music as a soothing balm for past injustices, but rather as a rallying cry for violence.
His idea of equality means annihilation of the individual, preying on people’s memories as well as their blood. (Blood is a symbol for heritage.) Hence, the scene where he speaks Chinese, threatening the Chinese herbalist’s wife, Grace (Li Jun Li).
Talk about cultural appropriation. You also feel Remmick stands in for the music industry. Hence his obsession with Sammie. (See RedLetter Media’s review).
Kudos also to Delroy Lindo as the wise man in the pack, a guy who learned not to expect too much out of life and focused on music and liquor as a way to cope. Shades of characters like Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Paul Benjamin in Escape from Alcatraz (1979).
There are many good moral lessons along the way, such as Elijah helping a girl negotiate a fair price for her work. He dresses in blue, despite being the more violent one, and his kinder-hearted brother dresses in red.
BLUES BROTHERS: Michael B. Jordan, Delroy Lindo, Miles Caton and Omar Benson Miller, quite literally on a mission from God.
They both want to help their community, but their decisions ultimately lead to everybody's death. It was even Elijah’s decision to send Mary to talk to Remmick to see what kind of money they had, despite his brother’s reservations.
The lure of quick money. It’s better to slog it out in the fields than take shortcuts. Hence, Cornbread’s character, played nicely by Omar Benson Miller, who is also there for much-needed comic relief.
Music, like anything, is a double-edged sword. Sammie himself uses it to seduce a married woman, Pearline (Jayme Lawson), quite a character herself. And boy, can she sing and dance in this movie. Everybody moves like a hip ballerina, unless they’re white, of course.
There are many other aspects of the movie to praise, in addition to the incredible music. The special effects are creepy and convincing, and the visuals are deep and moving. The characters are all likeable, and the redemption arcs are all deserved.
You’ll notice the scene with the rattlesnake, which they stab in its neck, making it bleed to death. The same way that Mary kills Elias, ripping his neck on one side. Remmick also talks like a preacher, wanting to ‘save’ Mary.
There are flaws in the movie, such as pacing and vulgarity, but the positives far outweigh these aspects. Another plus point is that black people are not passive victims here, authors of their fate.
SYMBOLISM RUN AMOK: Remmick as part of a 'trio' of evil tries to seduce Mary in this disturbing scene. When he dies its in a lake, a redemption/baptism scene.
The story also doesn’t shy away from black-on-black crime; usage of the n-word, the truck theft scene, the story of the twins’ abusive father, etc. The twins believe that money will absolve these sins, but in reality, it is music that reminds people of their freedom and brings everybody together, regardless of race.
Hence, Sammie refused to give up the guitar, becoming a preacher in his way.
