Is God Is Review: A Stylish Revenge Tale With Real Scars

Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is is the kind of revenge movie that walks into the room covered in blood, poetry, and pain, then dares you to keep up. Based on Harris’ award-winning play and marking her feature directorial debut, the film follows twin sisters Racine and Anaia as they set out on a violent journey tied to a family history that never stopped burning. The setup alone sounds like a classic revenge road trip, but Harris is chasing something stranger, more mythic, and a lot more personal than a standard grindhouse copycat. The film is built around Black women’s rage, love, survival, and the question of what revenge actually costs.

The Good

Kara Young and Mallori Johnson give the movie its heartbeat

The biggest reason Is God Is works is the bond between Kara Young’s Racine and Mallori Johnson’s Anaia. These two do not play their sisterhood in some neat, sentimental register. This relationship feels lived in, bruised, protective, and occasionally combustible. Racine is the rough one, all forward motion and open flame. Anaia is quieter, more inward, but never weak. That contrast gives the movie its emotional engine, and it keeps the film grounded even when the tone gets wild.

What really landed for me is how the film slowly lets you adjust to its rhythm. At first, the performances may feel heightened or even a little theatrical. Then the emotional truth starts sneaking up on you. By the time the movie reaches its stronger later stretches, those choices start to feel intentional rather than odd. Young gives Racine this dangerous, restless energy that makes her hard to ignore, while Johnson finds the humanity beneath Anaia’s scars without turning her into a pity case. Together, they carry the movie like two sides of the same wound.

The style is loud, specific, and rooted in something real

This is one of those movies where the visual language matters almost as much as the dialogue. Harris is clearly not chasing realism. The settings, costumes, makeup, color palette, and hair all create a universe that is part folklore, part fever dream, part revenge western.

That approach gives Is God Is a real identity. The film feels steeped in Black culture, not as decoration, but as texture, rhythm, and point of view. Even small details seem loaded with intention. There is a memorable image of Ruby surrounded by women braiding her hair that says more about beauty, ritual, pain, and power than some entire scripts manage in twenty pages. Harris and her team clearly understand that style is not just about making a frame look cool. It is about building meaning.

Sterling K. Brown brings real menace

Sterling K. Brown plays “Man” like a figure who has poisoned every room before he even walks into it. The movie smartly builds him up through damage, memory, and fear before fully putting him on display. When he does arrive, Brown does not chew scenery in the obvious way. He plays the role with a controlled kind of evil that makes him even more unsettling. It is not just that he is cruel. It is that he feels like the source of rot in this family tree.

Vivica A. Fox also deserves real credit here. Ruby could have played as pure symbolism, but Fox gives her vulnerability and command at the same time. Erika Alexander and Janelle Monáe add flavor to the film’s strange world too, bringing performances that fit the movie’s bold tone without feeling disconnected from it.

The Bad

The middle stretch can wobble a little

As much as I admired what Harris is doing here, Is God Is is not always smooth in the moment-to-moment experience. There are stretches, especially in the middle, where the film feels more interesting than gripping. Some scenes linger in the film’s stylization a bit longer than they need to, and the pacing occasionally loses momentum before snapping back into place.

The tone can also be an adjustment. This is a movie that asks you to meet it where it lives. If you are waiting for it to settle into a conventional thriller groove, you may spend part of the runtime at arm’s length. The voice is so specific that it will probably divide some viewers. For me, the film eventually won that battle, but it does ask for patience.

Final Thoughts

Is God Is is not trying to be clean, polite, or easily digestible, and honestly, that is a big part of its appeal. Aleshea Harris has made a revenge film that feels theatrical, punk, Southern gothic, and emotionally bruised all at once. It has echoes of Kill Bill in the blood and swagger, but its soul is somewhere else entirely. This movie is more interested in Black women’s pain, rage, and self-definition than in serving up a simple body-count fantasy. That makes it messier than your average revenge thriller, but also far more memorable.

It does not hit every beat with perfect force, and there are moments where the style threatens to outrun the story. Still, when Is God Is locks in, it really locks in. The performances are strong, the imagery sticks, and the emotional payoff lands. This is a bold debut from Harris and the kind of film that feels like it will find its people fast. It may not be for everybody, but for the audience willing to ride its strange and bloody wavelength, Is God Is leaves a mark.