Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!
I’ve got a lot of feelings about Is God Is, and I’m not sure exactly where I should start with them. So let’s start with the fact that this is director Aleshea Harris’s debut film as a director. Harris is a playwright and this movie started as a stage drama, but that’s not at all obvious from the way this is filmed. Discovering that this is her first movie is not unlike learning that Get Out was Jordan Peele’s directorial debut. Is God Is is a mature effort that feels like Harris has been sitting in the directors’ chair for a decade.
ce This is a revenge movie through and through, but this is not like an ‘80s revenge movie where Arnold Schwarzeneggar tracks down the guys who left him for dead and kills them one by one with a quip for each death. This is an old school revenge movie, one that feels like the natural child of every Western in history where a man hunted down the gunslinger who murdered his family.
That is the story we’re going to be following here. Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson) are twin sisters who were scarred as children when their father (Sterling K. Brown) lit their mother (Vivica A. Fox) on fire. Racine has burn scars down her left arm and onto her back while Anaia has scars on her face. Their father has wandered off to father other children while the girls, told their mother was dead, are passed off between foster families.
Now as adults, the girls have discovered that their mother Ruby, who Racine refers to as God, is still alive. They make a pilgrimage to visit her before she dies and discover that as badly as they were burned, she was burned far worse. She asks the girls to find their father and kill him. Neither is keen on the idea until she shows them just how severely she was burned. Racine is immediately all-in on the plan and Anaia goes along eventually, at least in part to keep her eye on her sister.
There first stop is the woman their father moved on with after attempting to kill the twins’ mother. Divine (Erika Alexander) had a child with the man and now more or less runs a cult. This leads them to their father’s lawyer (Mykelti Williamson), who had his tongue ripped by their father to prevent him from spilling any secrets. From here, the twins discover that their father now has a completely new life—a new woman (who he naturally abuses) and a set of twin boys. The girls head in with plans to kill their father and bring back a piece of him to their mother before she dies.
This is the entirety of the plot. The twins seek out their sociopathic father with the intent of killing him to avenge what happened to them and to their mother. The clock is ticking because their mother is dying and will be gone soon.
So, while the plot here is simple, not much else is. Is God Is works entirely on the fact that Young and Johnson are completely believable not just as sisters, but as twins, at least in how they act. The truth is that the two of them are different in height pretty significantly, although this helps in identifying them, since they have the same hair. So, while the look doesn’t scream “twins,” the performances genuinely do. Racine and Anaia frequently communicate in the third person with each other, call each other “Twin,” often at the same time, and sometimes communicate full sentences with only a look.
The whole thing is well-cast and filmed, as mentioned above, by someone who seems like she has been directing film for a decade. But there are a few things that don’t quite work for me. One is the overall pacing. We get to where the final confrontation is going to take place with a good 40 minutes left in the film; that’s roughly 40% of the film’s running time. And while the time is generally used well, there are moments here where the film feels like it drags a bit. It’s lopsided, because those last 40 minutes also feel like the third act of the film.
That, and the title is pretty terrible.
But really, this is a hell of a film. It’s brutal and relentless, and while Racine is terrifying, it’s very easy to root for her and especially the softer and gentler Anaia. I’m going to guess this will be ignored for a lot of the award shows coming at the start of next year, but genuinely this should be in the running for Hair & Makeup.
Why to watch Is God Is: Revenge is best served however the hell you can serve it.
Why not to watch: Terrible title.
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