Is God Is

“Careful with vengeance; you never know where the blood will land.” This piece of advice goes unheeded in Aleshea Harris’ knockout debut feature Is God Is (based on her play), a film that boldly examines the limitations of revenge, the strengths and flaws of family, and the very notion of a creator (divine or human) whose commands must be followed.

Twins Racine (Kara Young, I’m a Virgo) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson, Kindred) live, work, and psychically communicate with each other as they avoid the rude stares from people around them: both were injured as children when their father (Sterling K. Brown) set fire to their mother (Vivica A. Fox), leaving quick-to-anger Racine with burn scars on her left arm and back, while the quieter Anaia bears them on her face and chest. The two spent the remainder of their childhoods in a series of terrible foster homes, but when Racine receives a letter from their mother, whom the twins assumed was dead, they’re beckoned south to visit her on her deathbed.

En route, the sisters pause to hug the “Welcome to” signs at the borders of Virginia, Tennessee, and Mississippi, but this isn’t just a literal journey; they’re traveling to the South of Zora Neale Hurston, of William Faulkner, of Flannery O’Connor, where passions run as thick as the humidity and where both the people and the misdeeds of the past continue to haunt the present. Indeed, once they arrive, their mother — whose burns are far more severe than her daughters’ — commissions the twins: “Make your daddy dead. Real dead.” Their homicidal journey leads them to a number of memorable characters, from a faith healer (Erika Alexander) in a living-room church to a mute storefront lawyer (Mykelti Williamson) to their father’s latest wife (Janelle Monáe), who’s both pampered and abused.

There’s an element of magical realism to Racine and Anaia’s travels, from their ability to conduct lengthy conversations through silent stares (translated for the audience via on-screen titles) to the New Wave editing involved in getting them from place to place. How do they get from a field to a bus? How do they know their father’s current address? Harris spins this yarn in such a way that such details don’t matter.

Having only seen the film, I mean it as a compliment that I can’t imagine how a tale as cinematic as Is God Is could have unfolded on the stage. There’s an exhilaration to Harris’ direction; she brings to the film the confidence of a first-timer who’s both assured and unafraid. She’s certainly eager to tackle heady concepts: Racine notes early on that their mother is God, since she created them, and thus their quest to kill their father is a mission from God.

And if their father also created the twins, he is treated throughout like the devil himself; Harris and cinematographer Alexander Dynan (First Reformed) spend most of the film presenting Brown’s character (credited only as “Man”) in fragments — his mouth, his hands, his eyes, his back — as though we have to work our way toward beholding all of his evil. (And speaking of the Bible, it’s hard not to think about David and Goliath when Racine adopts a rock in a sock as her weapon of choice.)

As the twins, Young and Johnson are asked to shoulder this ambitious feature, and they make a great team, capturing the rage and pathos and humor of these put-upon yet thoroughly indefatigable characters. The marquee names make the most of their relatively brief appearances, but the two leads carry the film with charisma and grace. (With credit due to the makeup and prosthetics department for making the sisters’ scarring vividly realistic throughout.)

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.

Director: Aleshea Harris
Screenwriter: Aleshea Harris, based on her play
Cast: Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, Josiah Cross, Vivica A. Fox, Sterling K. Brown
Executive producers: Stacy O’Neil, Nicole King, Kenneth Yu
Producers: Tessa Thompson, Kishori Rajan, Riva Marker, Janicza Bravo, Aleshea Harris
Director of photography: Alexander Dynan
Production design: Freyja Bardell
Editing: Blair McClendon
Music: Joseph Shirley, Moses Sumney
Sound design: Leslie Shatz, sound designer/re-recording mixer
Production companies: Orion Pictures, Linden, Viva Maude, CYRK
In English
99 minutes