I had a couple options for this weekend, so I opted for the new revenge flick Is God Is, largely out of curiosity, and the general belief that the Guy Ritchie movie will still be out next week. I didn’t know much about the movie aside from writer/director Aleshea Harris adapted her own stage play when she made this movie, and having seen it, I am genuinely curious as to how this story was a stage play. I am not saying it can’t be done, but the way this story is told takes full advantage of the fact it’s a movie in ways that a stage play can’t.
I’d explain that more, but I think you need to see Is God Is to get it since I try very hard to avoid spoilers.
Twin sisters Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson) only really have each other. Both sisters have some horrible burn scars, with Racine having a ruined arm and Anaia’s face being a mess, but Racine, who has a temper, has always been quick to defend Anaia even if it cost the two sisters every time. When the pair get a summons from their long-believed-dead mother “God” (Vivica A. Fox), they find a woman who is even more burned than the two of them, and she has a task for her two daughters: find their no-good father (Sterling K. Brown) and kill him. He is the man who burned all three of them on multiple lessons.
Anaia, as it is, is not a violent person and doesn’t want to do it, but Racine doesn’t need much convincing. The pair set off, using the only lead they have, and find a trail of people their unnamed father has left broken or damaged in his wake. Referred to as “the monster” in the trailers, the man has apparently never had a relationship with anybody that didn’t end badly for the other person, though some are less willing to see that fact than others. Of course, neither of the sisters, who address each other as “twin,” really knows how to kill someone, and their means are rather skimpy anyway. But the sisters have each other’s back, communicate whole conversations non-verbally, and may be owed this revenge themselves for the lives that they led, lives made worse because their daddy set their mommy on fire and both parents essentially abandoned them. Is revenge worth it?
Let’s start off by giving a hat tip to writer/director Harris: for someone making her first movie, she has a lot of creative ideas here. God’s story, on what happened to her, goes to a camera-addressing moment in black and white with only a few slashes of color, and Brown’s face is largely obscured for most of the movie.The characters are also well-realized people. Racine’s temper and Anaia’s naivete both shine through, as each sister will stand by the other even as Anaia has some really grave doubts about what they’re up to. True, they don’t look much like twins (other characters seem to know they are twins despite the fact that they do not look alike, with Anaia being noticeably taller for one thing), but they both do have distinct personalities. The script also shows the different ways an abusive man can hurt others, not just women, even as it questions whether or not Racine and Anaia’s quest is the right thing to do given some of the things they do along the way.
If I had a complaint, it is that a part of me wishes the movie was even crazier. The movie is equal parts pulp story and meditation on what domestic abuse does to people. When Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, and Janelle Monáe;s respective characters all react differently to the same man’s abuse, ranging from denial, to fatalism, so self-righteousness, then I think it says something about what the movie is trying to say, particularly when the only weapon the sisters come up with a large rock inside a sock. That might be the clearest sign that, no matter what you might want from this movie, it isn’t subtle.
Grade: B
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