Forgive the minor spoiler, but there’s a mid-credit sequence at the end of Sinners. On leave from his gig as the Black Panther franchise shepard, you’d be forgiven for expecting writer/director Ryan Coogler to wash his hands of all things Marvel on his first non-IP outing since 2013’s Fruitvale Station, but the scene exists for reasons beyond mere brand extension. Clarifying the fate of a few key characters while projecting out into a future, it’s entirely too meaty to play politely while audiences are standing up and collecting their belongings, but you get the feeling Coogler simply couldn’t help himself. The two-plus hours that have just unfurled deserve a swan song, and their creator is determined to give them one, even at the expense of proper structure and wizened brevity. It’s a microcosm of the film at large, bursting with ideas and images to the point where they start to defy their packaging, a trip to the past that’s dead set on holding centuries of human history within its vivacious yet trembling grip.

To fully contend with a scope this large, Sinners begins by reckoning with the past, laying its scene in the Mississippi Delta of 1932, briefly visiting the aftermath of one calamitous night before retreating back to the proceeding morning. The sun rises on identical twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan), an ascendant pair of gangsters who have returned home from Chicago to start a Juke Joint in their hometown of Clarksdale. Employing both leering intimidation and financial incentives, the SmokeStack brothers assemble quite the crew for their opening night, consisting of an up-and-coming blues singer who happens to be their cousin (Miles Caton), a down-on-his-luck multi-instrumentalist (Delroy Lindo), and Smoke’s estranged paramore who’s as gifted in the kitchen as she is in matters of the occult (Wunmi Mosaku). Everything’s set up for a sweaty, saucy, sexy night just outside of town, but it wouldn’t be a movie if a swath of antagonists didn’t eventually present themselves.

These ne’erdowells wait until the forty minute mark to appear, though rushing straight to the tumult would do a disservice to how deftly Coogler and crew set up their story. Unspooling as an extended getting-the-gang-back-together montage, Sinners’ opening salvo has no business being as engaging as it is, the result immaculate craftsmanship and irrefutable energy. Marketed on the strength of its IMAX camera cinematography, the movie is both deeply sumptuous and wholly lived-in, kinetically captured on film by Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who benefits from mapping out Hannah Beachler’s ruthlessly detailed production design. Their ability to communicate narrative through sight and movement alone is the stuff that celluloid dreams are made of, coming to life as fully in simple interludes of characters crossing the street as it does when the souped up action finally arrives. By the time the carnage takes over, you can’t help but miss the smaller stuff.

The more imposing element comes in the form of a vampire invasion, and while one wishes Warner Brothers wouldn’t have unveiled the twist in all their promotional material, the hellions’ thematic relevance ties the whole project together. After all, blood suckers, more so than any of their cryptid brethren, are always a stand-in for some larger idea or social meditation, though Sinners is unique for using them to explore vampirism itself. Starting out as a group of Irish immigrants led by a dastardly, soft-spoken Jack O’Connell, it’s no accident that the horde increases its number while also culturally diversifying. They come armed with their own form of musical expression, dancing and singing in the moonlight just outside the door, a siren song for those who wish to peddle their wares across a more eclectic diaspora. Assimilation looks mighty fine when wielded by those who stand to benefit, and Coogler cleverly observes the allure of both homogenization and solidarity in equal measure.

Of course it’s hard to keep tabs on Sinners’ myriad overarching theses when the fangs come out, and for its many irrefutable accomplishments, the movie has a tough time tackling the melees. Anyone who’s seen Creed knows about Coogler’s facility with combat on an intimate scale, but the climactic collisions here are more in line with Black Panther’s third act throwdown, with a regrettable haze increasing along with the size and spectacle. Spatial reasoning falls to the wayside, and the effects work again leave something to desired, the hard won tactile reality of the first ninety minutes infringed upon by digitally assisted sterility. Perhaps that won’t matter to those who buy their ticket with a pound of flesh at top of mind, though their reflexive celebration of the butchery might have more to do with the performers at its center.

Jordan has always been more charismatic than flexible as a thespian, and the decision to literally double down on this idea comes with ample rewards. Smoke and Stack are defined by their similarities as much as their differences, the former brooding and the latter galavanting, their bristling machismo functioning as a common denominator. He burns a movie star-sized hole in the screen, though Coogler and company refuse to let him blow his co-stars off the map. Part of this is positioning, whether it be the literal lens right up in Lindo’s beautifully worn face, or Hailee Steinfeld slotting into a rich history of filmic femme fatales, but being afforded an enviable entry point only matters if you can make good on what’s being offered. From newcomer Caton on down to beleaguered bouncer Omar Benson Miller, Sinners exclusively has aces up its sleeve.

The winning hand is played somewhere near the halfway point, in a sequence that puts nearly all of musical history in a blender that reaches across continents and eras without ever leaving the establishment. A technical and ideological halo jump, the tracking shot defies easy explication, and, to the wrong set of eyes, good taste as well. The potential problems on hand are more logistical than moral, asking the viewer to come along for a daring, brazen flight of fancy that would have no chance of landing safely on the tarmac without the help of composer Ludwig Göransson. Credited as a producer as well as sonic supervisor, the Oppenheimer Oscar winner draws a warm sound bath that functions as a portal, calcifying Sinners’ proposition that music is the adhesive that holds history together, for both better and worse. When your echoes reach this freely across the cosmos, it’s hard to ensure that only the right ones get in.

Some wrong ones are bound to cross the barrier when your reach is this expansive, and no one could properly assert that Sinners is without fault. The editing can get wonky from time to time, and the bonus track shoot-out that follows the band’s ill-fated night initially reads as an audience-pandering settling of incongruous scores. None of that matters when the heart-stopping pay off bares out, just as the movie’s other occasional follies are powerless to tarnish the ambition and accomplishment on display. Maybe that’s the thinking behind that hairbrained mid-credit stinger, which revisits scenes from earlier in the film as if its closing the loop on a long-running television series. The core of the movie is too durable to be felled by a little self-celebration, and by the time it hits, Coogler is well within his rights to claim victory. Not everyone gets to go through hell as a means to reach heaven.