‘Sinners’: How 287 Prosthetics, 26 Custom Fangs, Gold Grills and Contacts Helped Create Ryan Coogler’s Supernatural Thriller
In the nail-biting climax of “Sinners,” vampire leader Remmick (Jack O’Connell) chases down Sammie (Miles Caton) as he tries to escape the carnage that the ghoul and his cohort have wreaked on the living.
Remmick catches up with him, and the two get into a fight. Sammie smashes Remmick over the head with his guitar before the vampire can sink his claws into him.
For the scene, which ends with the sunrise and the annihilation of the vampires, director Ryan Coogler submerged the cast and crew in a Louisiana lake. “There was no room for error,” says the film’s prosthetic makeup designer Michael Fontaine, who spent weeks planning, sculpting and molding castings.
To pull that sequence off, Fontaine built a fiberglass plate that went on Remmick’s head with magnets attached to it so that a fake guitar resonator could snap into it. “We have this plate on his head. It’s hidden by prosthetics and wigs, so it looks like it’s just his head, but there’s a whole structure under there. There’s tubing that pumps smoke and blood out of it,” Fontaine says.
Additionally, O’Connell had to wear long fake fingers, so he couldn’t use his hands all day. Massive dentures also covered his face and, to complete the look, he wore special contact lenses.
Elsewhere, his injured man look with burns and blood sores when he first appears took six hours to apply.
For the film’s coda, when we see Michael B. Jordan’s Stack (Jordan also plays his twin, Smoke) in the 1990s — he’s a vampire kitted out with the latest in hip-hop fashion. Fontaine created 14-karat grills for Jordan. “His gold grills turn into a point, as if the fang had the ability to almost bend the gold in his mouth,” Fontaine says.
The bite mark on his neck required Jordan to spend “two hours every day of putting this very elaborate prosthetic on.” He adds, “At one point it had tubing that ran up inside of it that could pump blood out of it on camera.”
In total, “Sinners” used 287 silicone prosthetic pieces, 26 sets of custom fangs and gold grills and 30 custom contact lenses.
Remmick catches up with him, and the two get into a fight. Sammie smashes Remmick over the head with his guitar before the vampire can sink his claws into him.
For the scene, which ends with the sunrise and the annihilation of the vampires, director Ryan Coogler submerged the cast and crew in a Louisiana lake. “There was no room for error,” says the film’s prosthetic makeup designer Michael Fontaine, who spent weeks planning, sculpting and molding castings.
To pull that sequence off, Fontaine built a fiberglass plate that went on Remmick’s head with magnets attached to it so that a fake guitar resonator could snap into it. “We have this plate on his head. It’s hidden by prosthetics and wigs, so it looks like it’s just his head, but there’s a whole structure under there. There’s tubing that pumps smoke and blood out of it,” Fontaine says.
Additionally, O’Connell had to wear long fake fingers, so he couldn’t use his hands all day. Massive dentures also covered his face and, to complete the look, he wore special contact lenses.
Elsewhere, his injured man look with burns and blood sores when he first appears took six hours to apply.
For the film’s coda, when we see Michael B. Jordan’s Stack (Jordan also plays his twin, Smoke) in the 1990s — he’s a vampire kitted out with the latest in hip-hop fashion. Fontaine created 14-karat grills for Jordan. “His gold grills turn into a point, as if the fang had the ability to almost bend the gold in his mouth,” Fontaine says.
The bite mark on his neck required Jordan to spend “two hours every day of putting this very elaborate prosthetic on.” He adds, “At one point it had tubing that ran up inside of it that could pump blood out of it on camera.”
In total, “Sinners” used 287 silicone prosthetic pieces, 26 sets of custom fangs and gold grills and 30 custom contact lenses.