“Is God Is” Review
Director: Aleshea Harris Screenwriter: Aleshea Harris Cast: Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, Josiah Cross, Vivica A. Fox, Sterling K. Brown Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios Running Time: 100 min. MPAA: R
Aleshea Harris’s bold, offbeat directorial debut gives the aged subgenre of revenge thrillers a spicier Southern Gothic coating. Based on her play of the same title, Is God Is tries to find the grit in going down the dark road of violence while still spitting with an intoxicating level of cathartic satisfaction. It’s the kind of film that can easily shift from a violent odyssey of betrayal and dangerous exchanges to biting, absurd punchlines without a twinge of whiplash.
Twin sisters Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson) have had a hard life, growing up with burned skin from a fire in their youth. They’d be mocked and scorned for their appearance, but always put up a tough fight, whether it was a bully on the playground or an employer giving them funny looks. Their devotion might not help them keep their jobs, but it is just what their disfigured and estranged mother, Ruby (Vivica A. Fox), desires. Having been burned even more, she reveals the true story of how her daughters were disfigured by their abusive father (Sterling K. Brown). Eager for revenge, Ruby tasks her daughters with tracking down their daddy and killing him. It’s a proposition that is initially met with amusing uncertainty, but quickly becomes noted as a divine task, given how there’s so little else to believe in for these women who have been burned in more ways than one.
As with many roads to revenge, this is a messy story that isn’t afraid to get dirty. Racine, having stuck up for her more facially disfigured sister, is willing to swipe, insult, and murder anybody in her path, taking all the blame to protect Anaia. That moral questioning deepens as the quest grows bloodier. Sure, there are amusing bonding moments, such as when they swipe a black book from the church leader, Divine (Erika Alexander). But there are also moments when they strike at the byproducts of their dad’s broken-heart path. The most tragic comes in the form of the current wife, Angie (Janelle Monáe), trying and failing to make her exit from the man she had several children with. And things get weirder when the sisters pose as strippers to get closer to their target through his horny sons, where even the moments of getting lost in seduction feel like a ticking time bomb, and very little will send Racine into a gruesome rampage.
The performances make this stirring odyssey so engrossing, with a perfect blend of the absurd and the shocking. The revelation of Ruby’s history of abuse is told with dark touches of dreamlike scene transitions and narration. But when the next step is revealed to the sisters, there’s a relatable hesitance to this perceived “mission from God.” Those touches of humanity in between scenes of fleeing from religious zealots and escaping murderous men always keep this film grounded, refusing to get lost in a haze of brutal exchanges and amusing discussions of what to do with the bodies. Young and Johnson have some strong chemistry in their interactions with the world, but their final encounter with Sterling K. Brown is the real treat of this picture. The way that his character almost casually strolls into his damaged house and debates his estranged daughters over a sandwich is so intimidating that you almost believe he could talk his way out of being murdered with that bold confidence.
And that’s where I think Harris’s direction works best. She has the faith to let her play’s dialogue carry the picture in a way that it doesn’t feel too obviously like a stage performance migrating to the big screen. It’s a film that isn’t afraid to get weird or embrace dialogue more rough than poetic, making the violent moments sting with more realism than theatrics. This is a hugely impressive directorial debut for Aleshea Harris, considering how effortlessly she weaves this weird Southern Gothic odyssey. What a fantastically alive thriller with grit, spit, and wit.
