Is God Is

Visually mesmerizing, lyrical and with a unique cadence, “Is God Is” is a one-of-a-kind experience. It’s angry and yet imbued with wry, fatalistic humor.

Is God Is shrewdly combines its genre thrills — it’s a violent road trip of murder and revenge — with arthouse aesthetics and thought-provoking writing, which gives Aleshea Harris a career path that’s as hard to predict as Racine and Anaia’s literal one. But I can’t wait to see what she does next.

In this fiery revenge thriller from debuting director Aleshea Harris, twin sisters plot to kill the monster daddy (Sterling K. Brown) who burned their house down. There’s no way to take your eyes off what’s on screen. No way in hell.

Is God Is may borrow from an old narrative formula, but it reframes it into something sharper and more searching. It shows that stories rooted in Black trauma don’t have to be pulled down by it. Vibrancy and texture are what give a killing spree its stakes, after all, and this one ends with an understated affirmation of the human spirit. How’s that for a twist.

This cast plays the hell out of this violent parable about what one endures, who one believes caused it, the need for revenge and the cost of giving those who deserve it their comeuppance.

Featuring larger-than-life characters described with epithets like “monster” and “the rough one,” and blending brutal violence with themes of generational trauma, abuse, and toxic masculinity, the film ponders what one does with the bottomless hate of being wronged.

It’s in how Harris depicts the seemingly psychic bond between the sisters for silent conversation. In those sequences, she plays the same kind of cunning games with layout and design that she did in the published text of the script, showing a raw ingenuity that adapts the stylistic possibilities of the stage for the more realistic setting of the screen.

I’ve been anticipating this film for some time now, and my God it did not disappoint. Best film of the year, so far. I will be going back to see this again really soon.

I loved this movie. It felt like the first time I saw a Tarantino movie - witnessing something thrilling, new, and incredibly entertaining. The performances deserve awards. The story is epic. And it looks great.

I havent seen it but when i clicked on the movie to read about it already had my rating (?!) and I cant cancel it so I leave 5 (was 7).

When movie rating aggregation sites give a film high marks, one should expect that the picture delivers the goods (after all, those grades don’t spontaneously materialize out of thin air). But there are times when a vastly overrated release inexplicably (and undeservedly) gets good grades that leave one perplexed. Such is the case with the debut feature from writer-director Aleshea Harris in this adaptation of her award-winning play of the same name (2018). This unfocused, often-highly repulsive revenge thriller/road trip title with a modern-day Western vibe and Afro punk styling starts out reasonably well but degenerates about midway into the film and never recovers (I couldn’t wait to leave the theater). The film tells the story of twin sisters Racine, the rough one (Kara Young), and Anaia, the quiet one (Mallori Johnson), who are severely burned in a childhood incident when their coldly malevolent father (Sterling K. Brown) viciously attempts to kill their mother, Ruby (Vivica A. Fox). The girls, who have been parted from their mother for years (believing her to be dead), call her “God” since she, like their divine progenitor, created them. But, much to their surprise, Racine receives a letter indicating that she is still alive, a notice that prompts an in-person visit during which Ruby explains what happened and instructing them to kill him. Anaia is opposed to the idea, but Racine is all out for “justice” (i.e., vengeance). Thus begins the twins’ search to find the man who nearly killed their mother and scarred them for life, an outcome that exposed them (especially Anaia) to repeated ridicule and Racine’s highly protective measures to spare her sister’s agony. At first glance, one might see this as a plausible premise for a big screen thriller, an idea made all the more fun by its quirky attributes that, in the picture’s opening half (and in its highly misleading trailer), make the film come across like an eccentric, campy Coen Brothers production. To be sure, the road trip starts out moderately amusing, with encounters involving colorful scenarios and characters expertly played by the likes of Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson and Josiah Cross. However, as noted above, the film takes a hard left halfway through and turns into little more than a troubling, pointless, highly stylized slasher film with cruel, graphic, uninhibited violence that makes one wonder what the filmmaker is going for (do we really need to see such appalling imagery?). Yes, yes, as the film’s title implies, there are alleged religious/spiritual undertones here symbolically dealing with concepts of good vs. evil (or god vs. devil) and the so-called “obligation” to do whatever our “faith” dictates, no matter how bizarre or reprehensible (it’s indeed difficult to fathom how “God” would want his/her/its/their name associated with such a vile project). These contextual “nuances,” however, are a lot more obvious and predictable than this release likes to think they are. And, to make matters worse, there are plenty of story threads that come out of left field and are intrinsically underdeveloped or unresolved; wasted talent, as evidenced, for example, by the positively dreadful supporting performance of Janelle Monáe (she went from her stellar work in “Moonlight” (2016) and “Hidden Figures” (2016) to this?); the incorporation of inherently enigmatic but largely unexplained character attributes as a pale substitute for meaningful character development; and a storyline open to more wildly diverse speculation and interpretation than Heinz has varieties. To its credit (an observation I make reluctantly), the picture features an array of highly intense performances (particularly by Young, Johnson and Brown), and perhaps they accurately reflect painful, troubling real world conditions, but they’re hardly enough to salvage the project (and, again, make me ask, do we really need to see this?). Sadly, “Is God Is” represents a prime example of what’s innately wrong with the domestic film industry these days and marks the need for a drastic change in the thinking of Amazon Studios, the latest woeful entry in a string of woeful entries from this creator-distributor. In short, to quote from the title of one of film critic Roger Ebert’s books, the best way to characterize this disappointing, excessive, unwarranted offering is simple: “Your Movie S*cks.” Next, please…

It tries so hard to provide something meaningful or worth watching, and it definitely pretends to be such. But make no mistake, it is not.