Aleshea Harris’ feature debut “Is God Is” follows twin sisters on a road trip of revenge, exploring fractured memory, forgiveness, and catharsis.
Aleshea Harris doesn’t ease viewers into her world—she throws them straight into it. where mercy has rules and cruelty has consequences.. Her feature debut. “Is God Is. ” makes its case early in a way that’s impossible to ignore. turning the phrase “finding God” into a road map for violence. grief. and hard-earned meaning.
Harris. a playwright-turned-filmmaker. builds “Is God Is” as a daring. multi-genre thriller that moves like a road trip revenge epic—sparkling on the surface. stomach-churning underneath. and ultimately aimed at spiritual reckoning.. Released from Amazon MGM Studios. the film centers on twin sisters Racine the Rough One (Kara Young) and Anaia the Quiet One (Mallori Johnson).. Their lives have been shaped by instability. spending years in and out of foster care before they finally prepare to meet their biological mother. Ruby (Vivica A.. Fox), for the first time in many years.
The reunion arrives with unsettling theatricality.. Shortly after they enter an olive green room flanked by attendants. the girls encounter Ruby—regal even in the middle of crisis.. Her “death bed” is staged like a throne. and the three women. all covered in scars. carry a history that feels less like coincidence and more like inheritance.. Ruby’s face. held in place by a mask. appears to have taken the worst of what happened. while her body rests beneath blankets.. From there, the film slides into a sepia-toned flashback, pulling the sisters into the origin story they were never given.
In the flashback, Ruby reveals that their father—referred to as the Monster (Sterling K.. Brown)—is the source of the nightmarish rupture that shaped everything that followed.. Ruby instructs the girls to “make your daddy dead. ” tied to the image of her helpless body being burned in the home they once shared. the kind of memory that doesn’t fade so much as replays itself.. The violence that permanently disfigured Ruby also leaves the daughters scarred. despite their small attempts to save their mother when they were just children.
What might look. on paper. like a straightforward demand for justification becomes something more complicated on screen—because Harris understands that the most extreme material still needs a mechanism for meaning.. The film manages its tonal balancing act with dreamlike visuals. pitch-black humor. and a soundtrack that helps absorb the unbearable weight of its premise.. Rather than treating suffering like something to be consumed. Harris uses the cinematic experience itself—its rhythms. its pleasures. its style—as a kind of spiritual counterweight.
Ruby’s story is told with disorienting calm. including a moment where she casually smokes a joint and frames it as “for the pain.” The movie’s approach to that line echoes what Harris is doing overall: softening the edge without dulling the impact.. In lesser hands. the tonal blend could land as glib or exploitative; here. it functions as a survival tactic. translating torment into a heightened. rhythmic fantasyland where aesthetic decisions act like emotional instruments rather than distractions.
The sisters’ journey in the present is staged with similarly precise craft.. As they search for the Monster. they pick up clues through a shifting network of witnesses. including his lawyer (Mykelti Williamson) and later wives.. Harris interrupts washed-out flashbacks with sudden bursts of color. creating a visual tether between the past’s nightmare and the present’s surreal. action-packed pursuit.. Even the film’s pacing feels calibrated to keep the suspense moving while still letting the history hang in the air.
The ensemble cast expands the movie’s unsettling central idea: everyone remembers the Monster differently.. To some, he is all-powerful and terrifying.. To Ruby, he is more pathetic, carrying a “tender” side that complicates the usual simple equations of villainy.. Harris doesn’t argue that what happened was harmless or misunderstood. but “Is God Is” refuses to flatten contradiction—insisting that abusers can be mythologized in competing ways depending on fractured memory. the distortions of trauma. and the survivor’s needs. whether they make room for vengeance or question it.
In that spirit, the film adds layers through each new stop on the quest.. Janelle Monáe stands out as Angie. the Monster’s newest captive. bringing an emotional sympathy that keeps the pursuit from turning into pure momentum.. Erika Alexander’s Divine the Healer leaves a fierce impression as another woman who remembers the Monster—but again. in a different way.. Harris also introduces the Monster’s other kids. shaping a mosaic of perspectives that deepens what the story knows about its antagonist while still leaving room for uncertainty.
That uncertainty is where the film’s dramatic soul ultimately lives.. “Is God Is” doesn’t hinge on whether Racine and Anaia will find their father—it turns instead on whether they can stay loyal to each other once they do.. The sisters are drawn to be magnetically watchable: Young and Johnson craft a sibling bond that feels honest. volatile. loving. and frighteningly fragile.. Racine pushes forward with furious certainty. while Anaia quietly resists their supposedly “shared” mission. and their opposing instincts slowly contort the obstacles they face into something broader than revenge as plot.
As Racine repeatedly promises her sister she’ll be the one to kill the Monster, their certainty begins to erode.. The unraveling becomes Harris’ strength. turning a quest story into a debate about whether vengeance can truly heal the people who carry it out.. Even by the time the film reaches its electric conclusion. the catharsis doesn’t arrive as a neat moral lesson—it comes from a conviction that the rage has an origin. and that the people inside it are never allowed to be reduced to symbols.
The culmination is both fiery and complicated.. Racine’s anger can feel exhausting to behold, but Harris makes sure audiences don’t forget what’s behind it.. If being burned alive in a bathtub isn’t reason enough to demand revenge. the film asks—without answering too easily—what forgiveness might mean instead.. In the end. “Is God Is” leaves space for the possibility that Anaia’s instinct to forgive could be the stronger act. even while refusing easy answers and cementing Harris as a singular cinematic force in the hell her story brings.
“Is God Is” receives a Grade of A-, and it arrives in theaters on Friday, May 15. Fans of indie film criticism can also follow the newsletter “In Review by David Ehrlich,” which compiles new reviews and streaming picks alongside exclusive musings.
Aleshea Harris Is God Is Kara Young Mallori Johnson Vivica A. Fox Sterling K. Brown revenge thriller