"Sinners doesn't deserve the hype," they said.
A common defense I've heard from fans of this film has been "the people who don't get it simply aren't intelligent."
While it is tempting to think about this in that light, I think the argument here isn’t really about intelligence. It's more about the frameworks people use to judge art.
A lot of us—myself included—grew up with a very Eurocentric idea of what “serious” or “high-quality” film looks like. When a movie operates outside that framework, it can feel confusing or even “bad” at first.
I understand where this film's critics are coming from because I used to react the same way. I used to dismiss films like this as vapid or pretentious, and in hindsight, part of that reaction was tied to biases I hadn’t examined yet.
Not every racist belief is conscious. Sometimes it's just the lens we were taught to view art through. And that lens can shape our reactions regardless of who we are. Even people from the same community can internalize those standards without realizing it.
So when people immediately jump to calling something “DEI” or dismissing it outright, it might be worth asking whether the film is actually bad or whether it’s just operating outside the artistic traditions we’re most familiar with.
