“Black Panther,” “Creed” and “Fruitvale Station” director Ryan Coogler sets his sights on horror with “Sinners,” a sprawling Depression Era tale of race, religion and “The Devil’s Music,” the blues.

Coogler immerses us in the early ’30s South where a couple of Black WWI vets who became Chicago gangsters return to their hometown with swagger and the guns to back it up to open a juke joint. The trip into “erased” history, violence and reminders of the cross cultural “melting pot” — Black entrepreneurs, a Chinese grocery, Jewish ice vendors — that reached even small town Mississippi is fascinating.

But hanging over these twin brothers (Michael B. Jordan) and their dreams for an old saw mill they want to buy from a klansman is the memory of the movie’s opening scene, a bloodied young bluesman (Miles Caton), clutching the remains of his resonator (steel) guitar, facing his preacher-father (Saul Williams) in the pulpit.

“You keep dancin’ with the Devil, one day he’s gonna come home with you.”

From the look of things, that’s exactly what happened. And whatever promise the picture makes as it unfolds, it’s still got to end up there, where a hundred and sixty earlier and far less ambitious films finished.

Preacher Boy Sammy may sing in church on Sundays. But Saturday nights are for the blues. That’s why he’s the first man his cousins, Smoke and Stack (Jordan) look up when they roll back into town. A juke joint’s got to have a headliner. And legendary harmonic player Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) can’t carry the load alone.

The Chinese grocers (Li Jun Li and Yao) can provide the catfish and side dishes. And the twins have brought their own booze, “Irish beer,” in a truck from Chicago, which they’re prepared to defend with their Colt 45s.

Old acquaintances (Omar Benson Miller) must be renewed and recruited. They have to get the word out to folks working cotton fields all day. The white power structure looms in the background. And one brother has an old lover (Hailee Steinfeld) to contend with, adding to their complications. But grand opening night is sure to be filled with music, drink, socializing and sex .

That instant success at Club Juke can only be interrupted by race. A trio of Scotch-Irish bluegrass “mountain music” players led by Remmick (Jack O’Connell) would love to join in and mingle their shared musical heritage. But “inviting” them or even shooing them away in means trouble.

The performances are top drawer, with Jordan and Lindo and Steinfeld crackling and newcomer Caton singing and playing with an authenticity it’s hard to fake.

Coogler introduces themes, agendas and histories in collision with this film. But once “Sinners” transitions from Black history at a crossroads into straight-up horror, nothing much is made of the Big Ideas in this ungainly mashup of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Crossroads” and “From Dust Til Dawn.”

The narrative narrows and surviving the night’s mayhem is treated in Tarantino/Rodriguez wish-fulfillment-fantasy strokes as machine guns and grenades, racists and “haints” or whatever those Irish-accented Carolina mountaineers crooning “Wild Mountain Thyme” turn out to be takes over.

After the care taken to place this story in time and set it in motion, that played to me as a terrible letdown. You build your picture up to “American Saga” length and this is the payoff?

Since “Black Panther” and “Creed,” there’s barely a trace of “Fruitvale Station” Coogler in his built-to-be-blockbusters recent films. But I still felt let down by the third act of “Sinners,” almost embarrassed for a filmmaker with big “Mudbound” ideas abandoned and flippant, absurdly over-the-top crowd-pleasing slaughter served-up instead.

Rating: R, gruesome, gory violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Andrene Ward-Hammond, Li Jun Li, Yao and Delroy Lindo.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ryan Coogler. A Warner Bros. release.

Running time: 2:17