Writer/director Aleshea Harris's Is God Is joins the work of Jordan Peele, Ryan Coogler, Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins, Melina Matsoukas and J.D. Dillard, among others, in the growing catalog of post-modern Black filmmaking.
Harris has turned her stage play into a wonder of a road trip/quest/phantasmagoria that doubles as a womanist musing on rage and retribution.
The movie stars Kara Young (of the recent celebrated Broadway restaging of Proof) and Mallori Johnson as twins Racine and Anaia, respectively, who are survivors of a childhood fire set by their psychopathic father (Sterling K. Brown) to punish their mother Ruby (Vivica A. Fox) for some perceived slight, leaving them and their mother scarred.
The inseparable twins, who long before moved from their home, are summoned to their mother's deathbed to receive her final wish -- find and kill their father and anyone currently in his life as payback.
The comparatively less scarred Racine has been her disfigured sister's defender for years, so she accepts her mother's commission with enthusiasm; Anaia is not so driven.
The twins follow their father's fairly cold trail to the home/church of the preacher/healer Divine (a refreshing turn from the always-welcome Erika Alexander), for whom he torched and abandoned Ruby and the twins. He eventually dropped Divine, as well, after impregnating her.
From there, Racine and Anaia find their father's lawyer (Mykelti Williamson), who, too, was attacked by his murderous client and is waiting for him to return to finish the job. He warns the twins of the self-destructive force of revenge, but they head out to their father's current home, where he lives with his wife Angie (Janelle Monae) and their twin sons, Riley and Scotch (Justen Ross and Xavier Mills).
The final showdown contains the much-anticipated face-off, but also important revelations about the sisters that might invite audiences to re-evaluate much of what has come before.
Maybe some will ask if there can ever be such a thing as "righteous indignation," and if there is, who does it belong to? God?
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