(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 7 November 2025 22:30, UK
Ryan Coogler quickly became one of the most talked-about names in Hollywood, on the back of Creed in 2015 and then Black Panther in 2018, but then questions began to arise about whether he could work his magic with an original idea, since all of his biggest hits had been based on existing IP.
However, that question was emphatically answered in 2025 when Coogler took the world by storm with his latest release: Sinners.
Starring frequent collaborator Michael B Jordan as a pair of brothers, Sinners pitted a gang of music lovers up against a horde of bloodthirsty, Celtic folk-playing vampires. People went crazy for it, piling into cinemas to watch the Smokestack twins and their pals fend off the blood suckers with the power of the blues. In an era where almost every box office topper is based on some existing franchise, this unique idea from an auteur director felt like a throwback to an entirely different age.
Many sources played their part in crafting Sinners, but one film in particular was a heavy influence on the film’s horror. Speaking with Sci-Fi Now, Coogler revealed several scary movies that he had consulted, including one that he claimed was top of the all-time pile.
“Robert Rodriguez is a big one,” he said. “On the nose, it’d be very easy to make a comparison with From Dusk Till Dawn, but it’s actually quite close to The Faculty, which is a remake of The Thing, which is one of my favourite movies. Definitely my favourite horror movie. So there’s a lot of [John] Carpenter in the film as well.”
Coogler mentions quite a few films in his statement, but the one he calls his ‘favourite’ is Carpenter’s 1982 shapeshifting classic, which, as good as it is, has been talked about to death; hence, it’s more interesting that he took time to talk about The Faculty, which Rodriguez made in 1998. That movie follows a group of students who discover that their teachers are murderous aliens, with an all-star cast that includes Jordana Brewster, Elijah Wood, Robert Patrick, and Salma Hayek, who once claimed she’d never watch the film back. Though not directly marketed as a remake of The Thing, The Faculty takes a lot from it, as well as other iconic horrors like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
It’s also noteworthy that Coogler brought up From Dusk Till Dawn, as when Sinners was first released, many comparisons were drawn between it and Rodriguez’s tale of vampiric strippers. Both sets of protagonists (which feature a set of brothers) are trapped in an entertainment venue and have to fight blood-sucking beasts to escape, and they both also begin as two entirely different stories, before taking a hard turn into full-on horror.
The Thing is one of those movies that has inspired just about everything that came after it, and while Sinners draws on the film’s isolated location and themes of mistrust, it’s the two Rodriguez movies that actually provide more of an insight into Coogler’s creative process. He might say The Thing is his all-time favourite, but the impact of the other ones he mentioned reveals the real truth of his fancies.
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