Sin and rebellion have long been two of the most fascinating themes to play out in cinema. Religion, like with the unnerving horror of Saint Maud, can also be employed to further explore the ways in which people might withdraw into it as a comfort or escape the confines of its stringent boundaries. More often than not, the act of any perceived sin and devout belief go hand-in-hand. In The Sinners, the feature film debut of director and co-writer Courtney Paige, sin and religion clumsily hold together a story with not much to say.
Grace Carver (Kaitlyn Bernard) is a preacher’s daughter in a devoutly Christian and conservative town. As a member of a cultish girl group who call themselves “The Sins,” so named for the teens being defined by the deadly sins from the bible, Grace and her friends push the boundaries of what is and isn’t acceptable. “We’re not atheists, but we aren’t sheep, either,” Grace explains condescendingly, as though being an atheist is bad and anything in-between is simply unthinkable. But, Grace wants the audience to know that she and her friends have minds of their own and aren’t subservient to the lord. Ultimately, they’re mean-spirited teenagers who discover that Aubrey Miller (Brenna Llewellyn, who also narrates) has been keeping a journal (similar to Mean Girls’ Burn Book) about their secrets. Things take a turn when, after kidnapping Aubrey to teach her a lesson, they leave her behind in the woods alone. Grace begins fearing for her own life when a series of grisly murders, all of them members of The Sins, start happening.
The film’s biggest sin is honestly that the main characters are obnoxious, annoying bullies, with little else in the way of a personality. The Sinners — an amalgamation of The Craft, Scream, and a plethora of other films from the 90s and early aughts — is woefully terrible, with a shallow grasp of the material that sits at the center of its story. It’s almost like it pooled all of the stereotypes about sin and rebellious teens, mashed them up, and produced this attempt at a sinister drama with little thought put into its plot or characters.
There’s also an utter lack of development on that front, with Grace and her friends embodying every cliché imaginable regarding Catholic schoolgirls. When Grace, who portrays the “sin” of lust, decides to step up and fully make her debut as an immoral person, she ditches the white shirt beneath her school uniform, braids her hair into pigtails, and wears crimson lipstick, signaling that she is reprehensible by nature to the townspeople.
But, who really is Grace as a person and why do she and her friends want to so publicly draw attention to their cultish clique? That’s really what it is, a clique. Sure, there’s something to be said about Grace wanting to rebel as an escape from her overly strict father, but The Sinners also has nothing deep or meaningful to say about her plight. Religion and the act of biblical sin are merely plot devices used to drive the story that is loosely stitched, and barely held, together.
The dialogue is stilted and cringe-worthy, the scene transitions somewhat awkward, and the performances not at all engaging. The narration, which is unnecessary, does a lot of the legwork, setting up the story and delivering exposition that leaves the remaining scenes deprived of emotional depth. Why not show rather than tell? There is no investment in the plot or the characters; by the time the killings start happening, there’s a cold detachment that never thaws for the remainder of the film. With no buildup, tension, or interesting characters, The Sinners fails in its execution and exploration in the themes it puts forth.
The Sinners is available on demand on February 19. The film is 88 minutes long and is not yet rated.
Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments!