There is much wondering lately about the character of America. Living in a moment of profound anger and uncertainty, it is worth considering why Ryan Coogler’s "Sinners" – aside from its obvious excellence as a film – has captured so much attention.

The film has also attracted critical acclaim, with a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations heading into the March 15 awards ceremony.

Is it a historical film? It expertly captures a fraught moment in interwar America in the Deep South, nailing details from clothing to cars to sociopolitical angst familiar to viewers in our time.

Is it a horror film? Well, there are an awful lot of monsters, from the menacing Ku Klux Klansmen who bookend the film to a cabal of vampires of the distinctly nonfamiliar variety.

Is the film also a metaphor for the Black experience in America? It would be difficult to conclude otherwise, given its chief themes.

An unconventional story with revealing truths

Without revealing the entire story, which takes place over the course of a single crazy day in the lives of twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played marvelously by Michael B. Jordan), Coogler’s film presses viewers to think collectively about crime and punishment, about what is permitted, about who belongs.

Fundamentally, the film poses the question about what humans can place our hopes in: elders, children, community or tradition? The film isn’t so much ambivalent about how to answer these questions as it is attuned to how many different answers there are.

After all, Smoke and Stack aren’t exactly conventional heroes. They are comfortable with crime and violence, and they are initially defined against the God-fearing pastor whose son, Preacher Boy, is central to the film.

This movie reads not so much criminal as underground, an effort to create a safe place for Black joy and community, and also for sensuality and sound.

Viewers enter a different and possibly unfamiliar world

Most viewers will have some idea going in as to what forces the community might want to escape: We’re introduced early on to the ugly proximity of White supremacy and the Klan businessmen who harass immigrant shopkeepers, among other things.

And it’s not long until the film introduces the malevolent undead, who threaten not just humans but also the other realms of the spirit.

We also become aware that Smoke killed their horribly abusive father, and that after hiding out, they fought for the United States in World War I. After a gangland apprenticeship in Chicago, the twins have returned to Mississippi to open a juke joint.

Keep your doors shut. Keep your children safe. The devil doesn’t dwell in the music of Saturday night, which is what might actually shield you from the evils loose in the world.

It’s because of that focus on music’s power that I can’t watch "Sinners" without recalling Howlin’ Wolf’s blues classic “Smokestack Lightning.”

Throughout his youth, Wolf would often watch the trains roll through his Mississippi hometown, seeing the sparks, flame and smoke spit out of the chimneys against the night.

Through their trials, we can imagine Smoke and Stack also singing: “Why don’t you hear me cryin’?”

Music is a character in this story

The film’s central scenes, particularly the astonishing musical centerpiece, “I Lied to You,” amplify this crying across time and space. As Preacher Boy prepares to sing, Delroy Lindo’s Delta Slim says, “Blues wasn't forced on us like that religion. Nah, son, we brought that with us from home. It's magic what we do. It's sacred, and big.”

The imagery and sound that follow reveal cultures across time, from traditional African to sizzling funk, from jazz to hip-hop. It is beautiful, necessary and, contrary the song’s title, urgently true.

A voiceover links this to the music’s religious themes, describing music that can pierce the veil between life and death, just as Coogler shows us several times in the film.

"Sinners" caught so much energy in part because Americans are fascinated by all the things that can rise from the dead. Vampires, to be sure, but also trauma and pain ‒ and the haunting and longing that follow them.

The movie documents how communities rally around bodies marked as “other”: churches, wise women, root pouches and ancestors all stand in the face of dehumanization. So, too, the drum and the amplifier, the camera and the stage.

Look around you. Whether you consider yourself a saint or a sinner, you know we’ll need all this and more in the times to come.

Jason C. Bivins is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at North Carolina State University. He has published four books on religion, politics and culture in America.

© USA TODAY