In “Sinners,” frequent Ryan Coogler collaborator Michael B. Jordan stars as twin hustlers Smoke and Stack, a charming pair who feel like the multi-talented star put Jimmy and Jey Uso from the WWE into a blender with an old VHS copy of “Harlem Nights.” These two Mississippi-born veterans return to their home after fighting abroad for the country and performing the perfect heist in Al Capone-run Chicago to open a juke joint, and try to carve out their own space in this world. Buying a plot of land and an old mill, filling it with booze, fried fish, and blues music may sound like the low-hanging fruit of entrepreneurial endeavors, but it’s clear to these two men, and the ragtag group of collaborators they assemble to bring it to life, that this represents something deeper. 

They enlist the help of their younger cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), a blues guitarist who idolizes them and longs to leave the Delta behind for a life devoted to music. But they caution him that while Chicago may be technically miles away from the Jim Crow South, that it’s the same division and restrictions — just with taller buildings. 

The film is bifurcated between day and night over the course of 24 hours, with the brothers splitting up to organize old friends for their grand opening while there’s still daylight. But once night falls and the old mill fills with new customers, the unsettling evil lurking at their periphery through the first act makes itself known, and everything goes very, hideously, horridly wrong. Without getting heavily into spoilers, the film seems inspired by works as diverse as the Quentin Tarantino penned “From Dusk Til Dawn,” John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” and a litany of other early 20th century crime flicks and cowboy pictures. 

While the film shifts seamlessly from its differing tones, the genres themselves don’t always gel together as well as one might hope. When the film slows down — as it does, repeatedly — the quieter scenes of drama, like Smoke and his ex Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) reminiscing over their lost child, prove moving and engrossing. In the intermittent foreshadowing and punctuation marks in stinging stabs of jump scares and lingering suspense, it’s as tense and unsettling as any modern horror effort. 

Yet by the time we arrive at the proverbial fireworks factory, and Coogler’s reliable action chops kick in, even Jordan utilizing the fight skills we’ve come to love from the “Creed” films  can’t quite save the sense that “Sinners” has bitten off more than it can chew. The high points hit and the audience will pop when called to, but it feels off.