Is God Is ★★★1/2
- 2filmcritics
- May 29
- 5 min read
Availability: Widely available in theaters. Online rental and other purchase availability not known at this time. Distributed by Amazon MGM, which has delays of anywhere from 30 days to 5 months from theater release to streaming. See JustWatch here for the latest information on availability.
There Will Be Blood
Two 21-year-old sisters, wronged by their nameless father, set out on a mission commanded by their mother (who calls herself God) to wreak revenge by destroying him and everyone around him. In her road trip thriller, “Is God Is,” first-time feature film writer and director Aleshea Harris uses this seemingly straightforward plot line to explore the nature of vengeance.
"Is God Is" contains modern-day retellings of Greek, Biblical, even Mafia dramas.
Racine (Kara Young) is the action-oriented sister, and her badly scarred twin Anaia (Mallori Johnson) the reluctant one of the duo, each the alter ego of the other. Their mother Ruby (Vivica A. Fox) is God not only because that’s what she calls herself, but because “she made us,” Racine reminds Anaia. On her deathbed, God explains that they were burned when their father doused his wife with gasoline and lit her on fire in the bathtub, casually exiting the house to smoke a cigarette as his wife and daughters screamed in agony. Most of the action—threats, chases, beatings, killings, revenge—takes place within this family, as modern-day retellings of Greek, Biblical, even Mafia dramas.
One of the first stops on the twins' road trip is in Louisiana, where Racine (Kara Young), left, and Anaia (Mallori Johnson) encounter one of their father's former girlfriends.
The young women take up God’s mission and set out to find their father in their beat-up, rattling, 1985 sedan, the road trip that will take them from the Northeast to the Deep South and ultimately to the California desert. Along the way they’ll encounter more of his wives/girlfriends, children, and victims. The first is Divine, a store-front preacher who sat with the Man (as he’s referred to in the credits) during his trial for the horrific burning, only to be left, pregnant, at its close. Divine (Erika Alexander in a send-up of the faith-healing church), with her 15-year-old son, the twins’ half-brother, maintains a shrine to the Man, expecting his return 15 years later.
Erika Alexander is compelling as store-front preacher Divine, who uses her charismatic skills to help conquer the devil, as Christ does in the iconography behind her.
The next stop in the twins’ quest to locate their father is the lawyer who got him off, an achievement he now regrets. Chuck Hall (Mykelti Williamson), a modern-day Johnnie Cochran, will warn them of their father’s psychopathy and his malevolent (male) twins.
As they make their way across the country, differences between the twins’ moral sensibilities emerge.
As they make their way across the country, differences between the twins’ moral sensibilities emerge. Racine fiercely defends Anaia and jumps at the opportunity for extracting revenge through violence. “Don’t you wonder what you’d look like if you just could scrape away those scars?” “No,” says Anaia, apparently resigned to her condition, or at least given to a thoughtful passivity. “Nothin’ to be done about it.” Anaia is more empathetic, cringing at the off-stage violence she hears Racine employ, and more conscionable, more morally cautionary, reluctant and perhaps unwilling to kill or harm someone, even after they have damaged her profoundly.
Another stop is to see Chuck Hall (Mykelti Williamson), an ambulance-chaser lawyer who successfully defended their father in his trial for burning their mother and them, a representation he now regrets.
The young women, who have been raised in foster homes and work as office cleaners, eventually find their father’s vast compound, raising their class hackles. Wife/girlfriend #3 is Angie (an always magnetic Janelle Monáe), who has had enough of her controlling, anal-compulsive husband and her indolent 16-year-olds to be on her way outta there. Unlike the Biblically named girls, the boys are cutely called Scotch (Xavier Mills) and Riley (Justen Ross). Like the girls, they are distinct personalities, Scotch a chip off Dad’s block (“he gonna be someone,” says the father) and Riley the introvert. Let the bloodshed begin.
Throughout the road trip, Racine and Anaia—and we—become increasingly aware of the father’s evil nature. The Man (an appropriately menacing Stewart K. Brown, nominated for a 2024 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “American Fiction”) remains a phantom of sorts. Until the last scene, we see his face only below his nose, suggesting evil cannot ever be truly known or fully understood.
The young women (and their father) also act in response to a lack of respect.
The young women (and their father) also act in response to a lack of respect—by a woman in the office they’re cleaning (“what ya lookin’ at?” Racine says angrily, defending her sister); by Angie, who calls Ruby a “ghetto wife” and spits in Racine’s face, the camera lingering on the spittle; by the arrogant Scotch, who insists Anaia turn her back so he won’t have to look at her face while she dances for him. “I got ya,” Racine tells Anaia repeatedly, as if Racine needs to offload any moral condemnation for the violent acts she’s eager to commit or at least wants Anaia to countenance.
Harris’s script, based on her play of the same name, complexly explores these issues of morality, couched in Black female rage and forbearance, all the while “entertaining” today’s audiences that seem drawn to horror—though horror is not really the genre here. She takes aim at the Black storefront church, religion generally, lawyers pitching their services with gimmicks and billboards, lazy children, and a loathsome upper-middle class. Harris could have included Black rage against whites, but she does not, limiting her targets to the Black community.
“Is God Is” taps into the current thirst for revenge, whether it be Trump’s or MAGA supporters, both awash in victimhood, or the Jack Reacher variety, standing in for the helpless.
“Is God Is” taps into the current thirst for, and blatant endorsement of, revenge, whether it be Trump’s or that of his MAGA supporters, both awash in victimhood, or the Jack Reacher variety, standing in for the helpless. Though Harris, whose award-winning play dates to 2018, may have had none of this in mind, she’s clearly channeling a contemporary zeitgeist.
The acting is uniformly superb, the script lively and pointed, Harris’s directing sure and interesting, the settings colorful and engaging. Bloodshed there is. If you can take it, this is a worthy film.
She says: Besides critical acclaim, this film is getting some buzz. There were as many people in the theater for a non-blockbuster as we’ve seen in a long time.
He says: The film’s final twist put me off; it seemed unnecessarily dark.
Date: 2026
Director: Aleshea Harris
Starring: Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Vivica A. Fox, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, Janelle Monáe, Xavier Mills, Justen Ross, Sterling K. Brown
Country: United States
Language: English
Runtime: 100 minutes
Other Awards: 1 win to date
Comments