| Director | Ryan Coogler |
|---|---|
| Genre | drama film, fantasy film, horror film, thriller film, vampire film |
| Runtime | 137 min |
| Country | United States |
| Budget | $90 million |
| Box office | $371.6 million |
In 1932, identical twins and World War I veterans Elijah "Smoke" and Elias "Stack" Moore return to Clarksdale, Mississippi, after seven years in Chicago working for the Chicago mob. Using money stolen from criminal syndicates, they purchase an abandoned sawmill from the landowner Hogwood to open a juke joint for the local Black community. Their younger cousin Sammie, a singer and guitarist, joins them despite his pastor father Jedidiah's warnings about blues music being sinful.
Smoke and Stack recruit the musician Delta Slim as a performer, the local Chinese shopkeeper couple Grace and Bo Chow as suppliers, the field worker Cornbread as a bouncer, and Smoke's estranged wife, Annie, as a cook. Annie believes her Hoodoo practices kept the twins safe, but Smoke is skeptical after Annie failed to prevent the death of their infant daughter. Stack runs into his white-passing ex-girlfriend Mary, whom he abandoned to protect her from the White community. Elsewhere, the Irish-immigrant vampire Remmick shelters from Choctaw vampire hunters with a married Klansmen couple, whom he turns into vampire thralls.
Sammie, Delta Slim, and Pearline—a singer Sammie becomes enamored with —perform at the joint’s opening night. Unbeknownst to Sammie, his music summons spirits of performers from the past and future. The performance also attracts Remmick and his vampires, who offer money and music in exchange for entry. Smoke, suspicious, refuses. Smoke and Stack realize that their patrons' reliance on company scrip makes the joint's profitability impossible. Believing that outside income is necessary, Mary goes outside and talks to Remmick, and is turned into a vampire thrall by him. She then seduces and fatally bites Stack. A shocked Smoke shoots Mary, but she is unaffected and escapes. Outside, Cornbread is turned into a thrall as well.
Smoke closes the joint early; as the patrons and Bo leave, the vampires turn them. Stack revives as a vampire, but flees after Annie repels him with pickled garlic juice. Annie realizes their assailants are vampires and tells the survivors how to deter and kill them. Although Remmick and his vampires share a hive mind, their personalities remain intact.
Still unable to enter the joint unless invited, Remmick threatens to go to the Chows' home and turn their daughter Lisa. He then promises to leave the others in exchange for Sammie, whose musical skills could summon the spirits of his lost community. He, Stack and Mary try to entice the survivors with the freedom of vampirism, revealing that Hogwood heads the local Klan and plans to attack the joint at dawn, but the survivors still refuse.
Grace, enraged and wanting to kill the vampires before they turn others, invites them into the joint, and a fight ensues. Grace, Bo, Annie, and Delta Slim are killed; Mary, devastated by Annie's death, flees, and Remmick turns Pearline. Smoke incapacitates Stack, then assists Sammie in incapacitating Remmick, who is incinerated along with the horde by the light of the sunrise. Smoke sends Sammie home before he kills Hogwood and his men, but is fatally shot. He reunites with Annie and their daughter after dying. Meanwhile, Sammie disregards his father's pleas to seek salvation and travels to Chicago.
In 1992, Sammie, now a successful blues musician, is visited by an ageless Stack and Mary at his local blues club. Stack reveals that Smoke spared him after Stack promised to leave Sammie unharmed. Stack offers to turn Sammie and avoid his impending death, but Sammie declines, satisfied with his life. Sammie then performs a song for them, as they remained fans of his music over the years. As they depart, Sammie admits that despite still being haunted by that night, it was the greatest day of his life until the sun went down and the violence began. Stack wistfully agrees, since it was the last time he saw Smoke or the sun, and the only time they were all truly free.