One of the biggest movies of 2025 was one that maybe some people didn’t expect: Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. The Michael B. Jordan starring film offered up a fresh take on the much-explored vampire mythos and gave viewers a unique, original tale of twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, who in trying to start over back home in Mississippi end up entangled in the something much darker than they ever expected. It’s an incredible film. But for many movie fans, Sinners reminded them of another film, one that turns 30 years old today.
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Released on January 19, 1996, From Dusk till Dawn initially received mixed reviews, but has since gone on to be not only a box office success, but it also spawned a whole franchise of its own and has become an influential film in the vampire genre — and is one of the films that Coogler has said influenced his own work on Sinners. The film is also perhaps the most underrated in Quentin Tarantino’s career as, while he didn’t direct it (Robert Rodriguez did that) he wrote it and also starred.
From Dusk till Dawn Is a Crime Caper Wrapped in Vampire Horror
From Dusk till Dawn follows brothers Seth and Richie Gecko (George Clooney and Tarantino respectively), two fugitive bank robbers on the run from the authorities who take a family as their hostages to cross into Mexico. However, while they make it across the border, they find themselves trapped in a club where they face a bigger threat than law enforcement: vampires. The film also stars Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Ernest Liu, and Salma Hayek. It’s an interesting twist, going from crime story to horror, and the second half of the film is pretty epic. Once the vampires show up, things get bloody and violent very fast making for an action-packed story that blurs the lines of good guys versus bad guys in ways many vampire-themed movies do not. Seth and Richie aren’t by any means heroes, but the vampires are their own kind of monsters.
Some of the similarities between From Dusk till Dawn and Sinners are obvious. Like Seth and Richie, Smoke and Stack have their own questionable criminal background and they are also both trying to escape it — they’re just coming home to start over rather than escape into Mexico. There’s also the whole vampire showdown at a club or bar, with Sinners seeing the threat come to Smoke and Stacks’ juke joint. The films also have similarly high stakes as it’s a fight to stay alive by surviving until dawn.
However, the two films are also very different. While brotherhood is central to both From Dusk till Dawn and Sinners, there’s a lot more nuance to Sinners. Smoke and Stack are more sympathetic characters whose criminal exploits were a mechanism of survival. Dealing with poverty and racism in the early 20th century, the pair turned to crime as a way out and a way ahead while the brothers in From Dusk till Dawn were more just in it for the money. This shift in detail helps make Sinners stand out, giving it more of an emotional investment that makes the bloody violence in the latter part of the movie all the more brutal and gut-wrenching.
Meanwhile, From Dusk till Dawn is a bit more of a straightforward action-horror film and that’s what makes it great. While it was initially considered one of Tarantino’s less-appreciated scripts, the film has gone on to gain not only a lot more respect over the years, but a cult following as well. It’s very much in line with what fans expect from Tarantino now, but it also takes some big risks (namely by taking a crime story and going full 180 with the surprise addition of vampires deep into the film’s back half) and they paid off. The film was a hit and prompted a prequel and a sequel, a video game, and even inspired a television series.
From Dusk till Dawn is available to stream on Pluto TV.
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Image courtesy of Tor Books/Macmillan -
Official art by Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme
