[REVIEW] Is God Is

By Will Dawson

I went into Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is expecting a revenge movie. Instead, I got a warning siren. A few weeks before I saw it, headlines were dominated by stories of Black men committing horrific violence against their own families. Almost immediately, the public conversation shifted toward sympathy for the perpetrators, framed as “mental health crises,” while the women and children left shattered in the aftermath became secondary characters in their own tragedy. Watching Is God Is against that backdrop made the film feel less like fiction and more like an ancient truth retold through blood, fire and myth.

Harris’ film is not subtle about what it’s interrogating. At the center is Man, played with chilling restraint by Sterling K. Brown, a serial abuser whose violence permanently scars his wife and daughters. Literally. But what makes the film sting is not simply the abuse itself. It is the ecosystem around that abuse. The excuses. The selective memory. The willingness of communities to protect harmful men as long as those men remain charming, familiar or useful.

The story follows twin sisters Racine and Anaia, played by Kara Young and Mallori Johnson. As children, they survived an unspeakable act by their father that left them physically and emotionally scarred. Years later, their dying mother Ruby, portrayed by Vivica A. Fox, summons them with one final request: kill their father.

That premise could have easily collapsed into exploitation or empty pulp. Instead, Harris builds something stranger and more layered. Is God Is feels like a collision between Thelma & Louise, The Color Purple, and Eve’s Bayou, with a touch of gothic folklore drifting through the edges. The dialogue swings between poetry, dark comedy and raw emotional confession. The violence is brutal, but the film is more interested in the psychic inheritance of abuse than in spectacle.

What stayed with me most was the relationship between the sisters. Young and Johnson play Racine and Anaia with a chemistry that feels lived in. Young is a budding star who exudes high energy, like a firecracker waiting to explode. Watching her on screen gave me chills and reminded me of young leading ladies that came before her, most recently Dominique Fishback in Swarm. Her Racine is hardened and combative, almost daring the world to mock her sister again. Johnson is more subtle and restrained in her portrayal, adding a layer of balance to the duo. As Anaia, she moves through life more cautiously, carrying visible scars that make strangers reduce her to ugliness before she even speaks. Harris understands how trauma reshapes identity differently depending on how the world responds to your pain.

There is also a sharp gender critique running underneath the entire film. As the sisters search for their father, they encounter people who defend him, romanticize him, or minimize what he has done. The supporting work done by Erika Alexander, Janelle Monae and Mykelti Williamson is top tier. Through those characters, Harris is plainly interrogating the cultural habit of rehabilitating abusive men while demanding impossible grace from the women they destroy. In that sense, Is God Is feels painfully current, even though its themes are timeless.

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Visually, the film is mesmerizing. Harris approaches the material like theater translated into nightmare language. Colors glow unnaturally. Characters often feel suspended in some in-between realm where realism and allegory overlap. You can tell this story originated as a stage play, but Harris mostly uses that heightened style to the film’s advantage rather than letting it feel constrained.

I do think the third act loses a bit of momentum. For so much of the runtime, Man exists as a looming shadow, fragmented through flashbacks and obscured framing. When he finally fully emerges, Brown gives him an unsettling softness that works on paper, but the final confrontation lacks the emotional explosion the film seems to be building toward. The ending, which inevitably involves fire, feels more functional than transcendent.

Still, that slight stumble does not diminish the force of what Harris accomplishes. Is God Is is furious, mournful, funny and deeply observant about the way misogyny reproduces itself inside families and communities. It is a revenge story, but it is also a meditation on memory, inherited pain and the moral confusion that trauma creates.

Most importantly, Harris refuses to let the suffering of Black women and girls become background noise. In a culture that often rushes to humanize violent men before fully grieving their victims, that refusal carries real power. Is God Is does not ask for comfort. It asks for recognition.

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Is God Is (2026, Amazon/MGM)

Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Sterling K. Brown, Vivica A. Fox

Rated: R

Director: Aleshea Harris

Rating: 7/10 — Two sisters on an quest for revenge, fueled by a violent family history.