Everywhere The Monster goes, he leaves a trail of destruction in his path. Everything The Monster touches is damaged to one degree or another. Sometimes the damage is on the outside, but it’s always on the inside. Is God Is marks the directorial debut of Aleshea Harris, who also wrote the screenplay, which is based on her play of the same name, and it is as ferociously realized a tale of revenge and retribution as you are likely to see this or any year. It’s the story of twin sisters Racine (the Rough One, played by Kara Young) and Anaia (the Quiet One, Mallori Johnson), who live and work together, sharing a secret language as well as a moral compass to a certain degree. Racine is more impulsive and prone to beating the shit out of someone who dares to mention her sister’s severe facial burn scarring. Anaia would never resort to violence, but certainly appreciates the gesture.
They are now young women who grew up believing that their father (the Monster in question, playing pure quiet evil by Sterling K. Brown) burned their mother to death and tried to do the same to them, but they escaped his clutches when they were children. When they get a surprise note from their severely burned mother (Vivica A. Fox, whom they call God, because she made them), they go visit her in what appears to be her death bed. She has one request of the girls, which is to track down their father and kill him for what he did to her and their family. The girls take this mission from “God” quite seriously, and begin their own version of a heroes’ journey, on the road to finding their Monster.
After crossing paths with characters such as Chuck Hall the Lawyer (Mykeli Williamson) or Divine the Healer (Erika Alexander), Racine and Anaia finally reaching the house where their father lives, occupied at the time by his new wife (Janelle Monáe) and their two children, Scotch (Xavier Mills) and Riley (Justen Ross), who are both nearly grown. The New Wife is actively on her way out the door and leaving her husband when the girls arrive, but that doesn’t stop them from enacting a little revenge on her as well—families are complicated.
Is God Is is about a lot of things, some more subtle than others, but it’s primary fuel is rage. These women are scarred in every conceivable way, as is their mother, and they all want The Monster to pay. But when the finally get face to face with this man, he is changed—meek, soft spoken, and eager to tell his side of the story of the fire that ended their family. And Anaia is ready to let the past stay in the past and stop influencing how she lives her life today. While the movie’s themes of generational trauma, family history, and vengeance at any cost ring the loudest, it’s this need to repair rather than to become what they have beheld that rises to the surface in the film’s devastating climax.
This is a story whose building blocks are raw, exposed emotions, and I’m not even sure I want to know how filmmaker Harris seems to know this experience so well. Young and Johnson are the reigning power couple of movies right now, and these characters will linger with me for months to come. See it in a theater; see it with a crowd if you can; and see it immediately.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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