Film Review - The Sinners (2020)

If you’ve ever wondered what a combination of ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘The Craft’ would look like in 2021, ‘The Sinners’ acts as the pairs lesser love child. Taking the best and worst parts of those movies and conjuring them together into a disjointed plot of sin and morality dressed in beautiful visuals which ultimately fails at offering anything new to a tired genre and ends with a conclusion so confound, it begs the question was any of it worth it?

First time writer and director Courtney Paige attempts to seduce us into her debut tale, formally known as The Colour rose, which sets its focus on a group of young girls known amongst their peers as the sins, seven high schoolers who spend their days causing havoc and terrorising the locals, led by the rebellious daughter of the towns preacher, Grace Carver (Kaitlyn Bernard).The group decide its time to take their name quite literally after discovering one of their own may have broken rank, and It’s not until they take their cruel antics too far and cause a young girl to go missing, that the group’s numbers begin to slowly diminish as one by one they each fall to a mysterious masked killer.

After a slow introduction which opens on a beautiful shot of a young woman submerged in shallow water, and a sprite coloured rose placed firmly between her lips, we listen as a solemn voice over sets up the unsettling tone for rest of the movie. It’s a confident start for the first time director that also introduces us to the local residents of a small god fearing town and our key cast of characters.

Paige paints each character with morally ambiguous intentions, intertwined at every turn, sexual affairs between respected figures that could combust at any moment, satanic occultists grooming young girls and a plethora of back stabbing and bitchy-ness that you would expect from a Mean girls offspring, which all help envelope the movies first act and elevate it above your standard teen angst thriller. However, as the body count begins to rise, the movie slowly falls back onto the tired troupes of a poorly thought out whodunnit seen in countless movies before it.

The movie sluggishly bounces between different narrative perspectives and a variety of ludicrous sub plots, one moment we follow the shy Aubrey (Brenna Llewellyn), the young girl who was unfortunate enough to befriend this mean group of girls, the next we’re forced to follow The sheriff (Aleks Paunovic)and his run of the mill ex city cop storyline and his feeble attempts at locating the killer. It wasn’t before long that I found myself unable to keep up with The sinners thin plot threads and by the time the killer was predictably revealed, I found myself feeling cheated of a satisfying conclusion as the movie doesn’t devote any time to setting up its villains true intentions. Are we supposed to just accept murder as the punishment for school yard hazing because the movie demands us to for its end to make any logical sense?

It’s unfortunate as the cast put in great performances all round. Their characters feel believable and grounded, and it’s the dynamics between these characters where this movie really shines. Watching Grace and her over bearing father go back and forth at the dinner table is a joy to watch unfold. Both actors helping to create a palpable tension that could be cut with knife, pulling you deeper into the scene. However, it’s the sinners inability to maintain this level of engrossing story telling that causes the second half of the movie to falter.

Many of the early set ups are thrown to the wayside in favour for a focus on a variety of poorly thought out red herrings that add little to no weight to the movies final act. Characters arch’s are left unfinished and as the movie stumbles towards its baffling end, I can’t help but ask why did they decide to go this route and abandon them?

‘The Sinners’ isn’t a bad movie but it also isn’t a great one either, despite beautiful visuals and stellar performances from its main cast, it isn’t without its flaws. This movie will find an audience with fans of the now popular Riverdale or fans of teen dramas, It’s just hard to imagine that anyone will be writing home about it any time soon