Wow. Once in a while, the emergence of an ingenious new storyteller can make a genre movie transcend its genre. That’s what writer-director Aleshea Harris has done in her first film, the entirely original and ever entertaining revenge thriller Is God Is.
Indeed, Is God Is follows the familiar arc of a revenge thriller. Two young adult twin sisters, Anaia (Mallori Johnson) and Racine (Kara Young) are living a hardscrabble, but fun-loving life. They have aged out of foster care, having been told that they were orphaned as toddlers when their mother died in a fire. Both sisters were seriously burned in the fire and Anaia’s face is severely scarred.
So, the sisters are shocked to receive a letter from their mother. When they visit her, they find that she was even more hideously maimed by the fire – and that she was intentionally set ablaze by their father (whom they don’t know). Steely-eyed behind a compression mask, the mother (Viveca A. Fox), demands that the twins hunt down their father and kill him.
Obviously, this is a lot for the gals to process. Nonetheless, they embark on the quest, with the more impulsive and feisty Racine more invested than the more thoughtful and sensitive Anaia.
Anaia: We ain’t killers.
Racine: We come from a man who wanted to kill our mama and a mama who wants to kill that man.
More than the one critic has written that Is God Is reflects Greek tragedy. Indeed, it’s like Sophocles wrote the ending of a Tarantino film.
Harris’ originality keeps us entertained and ever-guessing: :
- The twins can communicate with each other telepathically and have whole nonverbal conversations that Harris has subtitled for the audience.
- Harris makes us wait to meet the father, who, surprisingly doesn’t look or act like the sadistic monster that he is. For one thing, he is played by the ever-civil, well-spoken and charming Sterling K. Brown. What is truly terrifying about this villain is not his appearance or his energy, but his emotional callousness and his casual dismissiveness of human life.
- As Racine and Anaia proceed on their quest, every character and situation they encounter is more bizarre than the next. Again, Harris’ work resembles Tarantino’s, but without the long speeches.
Aleshea Harris originally wrote Is God Is as a play and won the American Playwriting Fpundation’s Relentless Award. The movie Is God Is is cinematic enough that you can’t tell that the source material is a play. Harris’ subsequent play On Sugarland was a Pulitzer finalist.
Mallori Johnson and Kara Young are excellent as the leads. Besides Fox and Brown, the rest of the cast is packed with even more seasoned talent: Erica Alexander, Janelle Monae and Mykelti Williamson.
This is a violent movie, but the worst of the gore happens off-screen. I found the most chilling scene to be the making of a sandwich.
Now in theaters, Is God Is is the best movie that I’ve seen in 2026 so far.