Ryan Coogler has always been a solidly dependable filmmaker, but “Sinners” — his fifth and latest feature film, as both writer and director — is more than just a very good film, on the same reliably well-made level as 2015’s “Creed,” 2018’s “Black Panther” and 2022’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

“Sinners” is the best film Coogler has ever made. It’s easily the best film of this year to date, and I’d argue it’s already earned a place of note among the more significant films of the first quarter of the 21st century.

With “Sinners,” Coogler has finally fused the real-life historic urgency of his first feature film, 2013’s woefully overlooked “Fruitvale Station,” with the aspirationally mythic qualities of his sports hero and superhero narratives, spinning an appropriately folkloric paean to how culture lives on, across generations, through the act and art of making music.

“Sinners” is a horror musical, and while it’s a diegetic musical, that’s still a tricky combo to pull off, since even the most successful blends of those two genres tend almost inevitably toward either comedy or melodrama, whether the flavor is more campy or satiric.

What Coogler’s horror musical instead evokes is a sense of something sacred, as the prologue to “Sinners” elevates musicians to a role akin to tribal shamans, able to awaken connections to shared ancestral spirits, but also tempting the appetites of darker forces for that same reason.

Even though “Sinners” turns out to be a vampire film, its predatory bloodsuckers are driven most strongly by their hunger for the music created by a talented young bluesman.

Real-life rhythm-and-blues singer Miles Caton makes his acting debut in “Sinners” as Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore, whose character feels like an intended homage to legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson.

Sammie’s set to perform for the opening night of a juke joint that’s being started by his gangster cousins — identical twin brothers Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” Moore, both played by Coogler’s favorite actor, Michael B. Jordan — in the Mississippi Delta in 1932.

Like any proper “House Party” film, half the fun comes from seeing the organizers prepare for the festivities, and “Sinners” uses the twins’ shopping trips for supplies, staff, performers and attendees to draw out tension, while also establishing their other relationships.

It’s such a simple visual, but I love how Coogler color-coded the twins’ attire. Smoke’s cool blue hues suit his business-minded seriousness and sorrows, as he reunites with Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), an occultist with whom he had a daughter who died in infancy. Stack’s warm red tones reflect his outgoing gregariousness and impulsiveness, as he struggles to stay away from his ex Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who passes for white, because he wants to keep her safe.

Not only does all this background build the suspense for these characters’ inevitable clash with the supernatural, as in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s “From Dusk Till Dawn,” but it also allows us to bask in the atmosphere and zeitgeist of this era of Southern blues.

Once Sammie finally takes to the stage that evening, his performance proves so powerful that, per the opening narration, it literally summons the spirits of both past and future, representing music from across the African diaspora, from the original pre-colonized tribes to the funk, rap and hip-hop of the latter half of the 20th century.

All of Coogler’s films are animated by Black pride, but never before has he delivered such a stunning, whirlwind sequence in pure, ecstatic celebration of Black culture as a whole.

It’s so mesmerising that it calls out to a clutch of vampires, here cast as literal “white devils,” spawned from racists, but ironically offering seductive promises of escape from societal oppression through undeath.

And to give the devils their due, Coogler even honors the haunted Celtic roots of the white vampires’ songs, since their Irish immigrant ringleader longs for the connection to his ancestral spirits that he’s lost by becoming immortal and unholy.

Never has an extended Irish song-and-dance number been more genuinely terrifying onscreen, leaving aside cheap jokes about Michael Flatley.

Annie explains that vampires’ souls sour as a result of being tied to their bodies here on Earth, without being able to rise up and above, so it makes sense that the white vampires are drawn to Black music by what Coogler’s dazzling depiction of Sammie’s performance offers.

It’s an artistically transcendent moment of cinema, and what these characters are seeking is literal spiritual transcendence.

I don’t care if you’re not into horror films. If you miss “Sinners,” then like the snobs who turned their noses up at 2023’s “Godzilla Minus One,” you are robbing yourself of an excellent film.

Stick around until the very end, because while it’s not a Marvel film, Coogler’s made enough Marvel movies that he includes not only an extended mid-credits sequence, that serves as an essential epilogue for our surviving characters, but also one last moment of musical transcendence, after all the credits have rolled.