Well, I’m not sure what I actually was expecting. The trailer is misleading to put it politely.

We are in 1930s. Two twin brothers known collectively as Smokestack (and individually as Smoke and Stack) return home from Chicago to open themselves a jukejoint. The trailer implies that the movie happens in this old sawmill-turned-club, but there’s actually plenty of movie before we get to that.

The first act of the movie is about the brothers’ return. They meet old acquaintances who they need to run their club, but also need to reconcile with. We learn about their violent nature, how they flash money around and their reputation as criminals. We also learn about their roots and what they left behind.

The first act is actually pretty much about what life was like for sharecroppers on cotton plantations during this era. They are poor, but that has lead them to close ranks as a community. We also learn of the importance of music to their culture as well as about their religious practices. And of course, there’s the everpresent threat of KKK or white people in general.

The second act happens at the club. This is very much about the black people (with their Asian friends) enjoying themselves in an environment where they can feel welcome (as the movie puts it). This is also where it gets pretty wild for a moment. At the beginning of the movie we hear about certain musicians who have the ability to reach over time and space to manifest their kind. You might have seen this in the trailer, which is, once again, quite misleading.

Before I get to spoilers, a few criticisms of the movie: The magic of music is set up at the beginning of the movie and we are reminded of that (very much so) in the second act, but that is the extent of it. It doens’t come into play in the climax of the movie. Speaking of the climax, the action is not really satisfactory and feels pretty forced. The music, outside of the diegetic kind, feels out of place. The style changes quite a bit and is often just not appropriate for the era, which wouldn’t be that bad, but since the music has been so strongly emphasized from the very beginning of the movie, it does stand out.

It is still an interesting movie even if it feels weirdly amateurish at times. The characters are good, we have an interesting community of people, and the diegetic music is good and the beliefs around it are interesting. It is also nice to see these people just having a good time considering what their day to day life must be like.

Before the first act ends, we are reminded that this is not just a historical movie. There is a supernatural horror aspect to it. However, it is a bit different take on vampires. The main vampire is white and he uses that to his advantage as he seeks help from other white folk against natives (is that politically correct these days?) who hunt him. We do have to keep in mind that we don’t really know how much he lies, but here’s the thing: All the vampires have each others’ memories.

This leads to the main vampire being very seductive. He knows what the black people have gone through and can emphasize. He brings up how he lost his family lands to other white folks. Again, we can’t know if this is a lie, but it is still an interesting point of view that doesn’t get mentioned enough: We are all victimized by the system. Just to different levels. For example, various European ethnicities have been regarded as less than white at various times. Most notably Italians and Irish, but Finnish, for example, were called Swedish-Chinese at one point, in a concentrated effort to push my people down. We still see this in action to this day, although we, Finns, are now extremely privileged in many ways.

Of course, it is easier to pass as a white, when you are Caucasian. And yes, there is a difference between “white” and “Caucasian”.

So, the vampire kind of offers the black people a way out of their situation. It might not be the best possible solution, but it is a solution anyhow. We just don’t know how much freedom there really is in their situation. There is a hoodoo practitioner (and sorry if I’m getting these wrong as I always mix up those various religions with roots in Western Africa, as they are often mixed up in media) who explains what vampires are in her view and that paints a very different picture.

At the same time, if what the vampire is saying is true, it is a new form of oppression. All the other vampires seem to be enslaved to the main one. So, would the people following him just exchange the oppression by the rich white folk to the oppression of a demonic being?

Still, he does have point in that we should be looking beyond surface level differences and into the real enemies, such as the superrich.