Try to think of something, anything, that vampires haven't done yet. And before you raise your hand and say "I got one," check your work, because even if you think there's never been a musical about a 300-year-old vampire virgin whose true love gets reincarnated every 22 years,

Sinners uses African-American blues and Irish folk music to illuminate the respective painful colonial pasts that the humans and their vampire foes both share. IGN recently interviewed filmmaker Ryan Coogler about that and why the film's vampire villain was as personal a character for him to write as Killmonger was in Black Panther.

"Sinners" works more than it doesn't, though it doesn't always gel, but it's a compelling and spirited demonstration of how lavishly "serious" a popcorn movie can be.