Ryan Coogler’s Sinners won four Oscars and was nominated for 16 and I’d yet to see it. Sometimes the labels associated with a film can be off-putting and, for me, ‘horror’ and ‘vampires’ have the same effect as, say, ‘experimental’ or ‘like a poem’ or ‘directed by Michael Bay’. It’s now landed on the streamers and it seemed like an omission that needed correcting, so I spent around ten hours with it. It’s only 135 minutes but should you hit pause every time it gets scary that’s how it might roll.

Please don’t sell me a vampire film when it’s a zombie one, even if I don’t like either

The film is a genre-mashing beast, told with gusto from the off – and you get nearly an hour of pause-free time, even if you know what’s coming down the track. We’re in 1932, following identical twins Smoke and Stack (both played magnificently by Michael B. Jordan), who are returning home to Clarksdale, Mississippi, after working for gangsters in Chicago. They are quick to violence yet charismatic, relying on presence rather than dialogue, and stroll back into town as if this were a Spaghetti Western.

The twins have returned to set up a ‘juke joint’ (blues club) in an old sawmill. They are joined by their young cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), a masterful blues singer and guitarist caught between the church (he’s the son of a preacher) and his ‘sinful’ passion for music. They each have a romantic interest. For Sammie it’s the sexy singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson); for Stack it’s Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) – who is of black heritage but can pass as white; and for Smoke it’s his magnificent wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), a hoodoo practitioner and herbalist who will know what to do with garlic when the time comes.

It’s a movie that was made to be slathered in music, and the blues seeps from its every pore. There is one scene in particular, which charts the past, present and future of black music through some mind-blowing choreography, that is extraordinary. But we’ve also had glimpses of a trio of Irish folk singers (led by Jack O’Connell) who will turn up at the venue and sing ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ beautifully before… lunging for a carotid artery.

It’s only 135 minutes but I spent ten hours with it

These aren’t your classy Ann Rice-type vampires. These stomp around in dungarees with arms outstretched and bloodied mouths, drooling – so much drooling. My longest pause was for a sex scene that climaxes in a bit of necking, the like of which I never wish to think about again. These vampires can’t be killed. Shoot them, and up they get. They also turn those they gouge. Doesn’t this make them zombies? The living dead? I am not well versed in any of this lore, but I don’t appreciate sloppiness. Please don’t sell me a vampire film when it’s a zombie one, even if I don’t like either.

Coogler takes no hostages, escalating the action into all-out mayhem. But he also delivers riffs on religion, Jim Crow, the power of music as a spiritual force. It’s impressive but if you are of a nervous disposition, is it worth it? That will depend on how much time you have. If it’s around ten hours, then probably yes.