About those Irish vampires in Sinners
Remmick (center), Joan and Bert - The Irish Vampires.
But first - The awards show must go on
If there’s an Irish accent heard on tonight’s (Jan. 10) Golden Globes show (CBS, 5 P.M.), it will probably be that of Jessie Buckley. A native of Killarney, Co. Kerry, she’s a Best Actress nominee and odds-on favorite to win a Globe for her portrayal of Shakespeare’s wife in Hamnet. Her co-star, Paul Mescal, born in Maynooth, Co. Kildare, is nominated for Best Supporting Actor but isn’t expected to hear his name when they open the envelope.
An Irish production company – Element Pictures – is nominated for backing a movie called Bugonia. Notable past Irish Globe winners include Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer), Colin Farrell (In Bruges, Banshees of Inisherin and Penguin) and Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird).
Where have all the viewers gone?
In what may be the greatest disappearing act of all time, the audiences for the Golden Globes (and the Oscars) are roughly half of what they used to be. That means maybe 9 million viewers tonight. Before Covid, the Globes would draw 20 million viewers. Where did all those viewers go? Gone to other attractions everywhere. Most of the people tuning in tonight will be women over the age of 50. Nine million is still a big number. In the country of the blind, the one –eyed man is king and all that.
Sinners is the most Irish movie nominated
Say what? The story of twins from Chicago who move to Mississippi in 1933 only to face racism, vampires and mysticism is an Irish movie? Not entirely, but my favorite scene on the big screen in 2025 was when those vampires come together with their victims for a lively Irish line dance to Rocky Road To Dublin.
Back in the Summer of 2025 I published the following on the Irish presence among the vampires of Sinners. Ireland being the home of Bram Stoker, creator of Dracula, it makes sense.
The Irish songs in Sinners. What’s with that? Irish vampires bring the musical craic. Originally published June 2025
Sinners is full of surprises, as any superbly entertaining vampire movie should be.
Eerie references to a mythical, pre-Christian Irish filidh form part of the opening narration. A filidh was a poet, a singer, one who could see things others couldn’t and often counselled Kings.
The first three vampires appear an hour plus into Sinners:Irish immigrants in Depression-era Mississippi who brought some of the olde tunes with them. We don’t hear them perform at first, but when they do, you might find yourself singing along to Wild Mountain Thyme – aka Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go? It was actually written in the 19th century by a Scot but was made famous by a singing Belfast family in the 1950s. So, technically, the version sung by the Irish vampires in 1932 didn’t exist yet. The three vampires, Remmick, Joan and Bert, show up at a juke joint where they’re not welcome. They say they’re there for the music and craic. We know they’re not. It’s blood they’re after. After being sent away they serenade their prey with a lovely version of Wild Mountain Thyme. Very unexpected.
You’ve probably heard Wild Mountain Thyme
There are hundreds of versions of the song and even a movie of the same name.Bob Dylan sang a version with the Band at the Isle of Wight in 1969. The Byrds sang it on their Fifth Dimension lp. Liam Clancy, who Dylan called the greatest ballad singer ever, recorded a live version.
Coming in Sinners after a mind-blowing cinematic musical montage, the performance pushes Sinners into sinister territory. Soon enough the ranks of vampires swell. Remmick leads the cadres of the undead in a rollicking version of Rocky Road to Dublin.
One two three four five,
Hunt the hare and turn her down the rocky road
And all the way to Dublin, whack-fol-la-de-da !
It doesn’t get much more Irish than that. It’s a song about a man traveling from Tuam in Co. Galway to Liverpool by way of Dublin. But it’s the dancing that’s a blast. Watch the chorus line as Cornbread, the bouncer at the juke joint who’s been bitten, “goes full Riverdance” as one critic put it. The Chieftains cut a version with the Rolling Stones.
Why these two songs?
The director/writer of Sinners, Ryan Coogler, and the composer Ludwig Göransson did a ton of interviews about Sinners but no one seemed to ask that question. Two classic Irish songs played in Jim Crow Mississippi outside a juke joint built in a day by a couple of twin gangsters home from Chicago with lots of money and “500 bottles of Irish beer”? Makes total sense once you’ve seen and heard the songs. But why did Coogler and Göransson pick these two particular songs?
Maybe there was something in the themes of traveling - to an afterlife or to Dublin - that attracted them; the idea that if life sucks you can make the trip, become a vampire and live forever. Throughout Sinners the vampires recruit the Black sharecroppers of Clarksdale, Mississippi with the allure of the Otherworld where ancestors live and no white man will tell you what to do. It could be argued that conditions in the South during the Depression matched those in Ireland when it was under British rule.
Or, maybe when Coogler attended Catholic school near Oakland the priests and nuns who taught him passed along their love of Irish music and these two songs were a couple of his favorites. That’s just a theory. But I wouldn’t be surprised.
UPDATE 1.11.2026: Irish Times discovers the Irishness of Sinners
In a column called An Irish Diary, Irish Timesman Frank McNally last week revealed that those Irish songs in Sinners carry a lot of symbolic weight. He assures his readers not to worry that the vampires are part of the Irish Diaspora, “I found myself squirming a little at the implications involved in an Irish-American vampire, Remmick, apparently joining forces with the Klan in his attempts to recruit a black community to the ranks of the undead. I needn’t have worried.” Fact Check – The Klan was a shadow of its former self by the time Sinners is set in 1932, having peaked in the mid-1920s. Were there Irish Klansmen and Klanswomen? Seeing how the Klan felt about immigrants and Catholics, not likely.
Sinners director Ryan Coogler recently told the Times, “I started thinking about Dracula,” Coogler Bram Stoker is Irish. I was researching him and researching this Irish folklore character. The Abhartach? I have trouble saying the word. But a lot of people say that this is where he got the idea of Dracula from.” And the world got the idea of vampires from Stoker. Thanks, Ireland. As for that Riverdance moment, “I find Rocky Road to Dublin to be such a fascinating song,” Coogler says. “Because it’s very upbeat and it’s very powerful, especially Luke Kelly’s version.”
Luke Kelly of The Dubliners