The most recent film in the ever-growing genre of Southern gothic horror had me leaving the theater with a barely eaten bucket of popcorn and a newfound craving to fulfill my mission from God to road trip through New Orleans.
“Is God Is,” a film adaptation of a play by the same name, takes bits and pieces from Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” and feels reminiscent of the Southern warmth of last year’s Oscar-winning “Sinners.” Yet, it holds its own in a genre chock-full of revenge horror.
The movie follows twins, Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson), as they embark on the religious mission given by their mother (Vivica A. Fox), whom they call God.
The mission: to kill their father (Sterling K. Brown), who set the three of them on fire in an act of domestic violence, leaving them scarred in more ways than one. In Greek tragedy fashion, Racine and Anaia take on a series of challenges from the people surrounding their father until the trail of blood leads to him.
As Aleshea Harris’s directorial debut, the film takes a series of creative risks that make the narrative even stronger. Harris captures the idea of twin telepathy through intertitles displayed on the screen. To better adapt the original play for the big screen, narration switches between different characters as the film flows.
In other films, both stylistic choices risk the possibility of coming off as staged and unnecessary, especially when similar tactics are commonly used in movies like the infamous “Twilight” series and “It Ends With Us.” However, in “Is God Is,” the choices add to the intimacy between the sisters and the depth of each character.
The gorgeous portrayal of rage, sisterhood and religion isn’t simply a product of production choices and a script. So much of the film’s heart and intrigue comes from incredible casting choices. Where the film lags, the performance fills the space.
Young portrayed the complex experience of a sister carrying both her own and her sister’s rage after the fire left her face untouched, leaving her with the privilege of being the “pretty” one. Her performance stole the show as the audience was pulled back and forth between the idea that Racine was the good guy fighting for justice and the idea that she was, in fact, her father’s daughter with an insatiable bloodlust and anger.
The choice to cast Brown as Man, the father, was a shocking decision that led to an immense payoff. Brown’s intense cinematography is full of morally high good-doers. Even so, after only seeing memory-faded shots of him until the last third of the film, the audience was left intensely enraged at such a famously kind face. I have never hated a singular character played by Brown; here, he changed my mind.
I’ve rarely seen a directorial debut as strong as “Is God Is.” The film combines road trip montages, killing sprees, church cult jokes and sepia-filtered footage into a complex picture of what it means to be god and what it means to be the devil. “Is God Is” was able to communicate layered ideas about rage and family while still keeping an audience on the edge of their seat, occasionally laughing. As soon as you think you’ve cracked the ending, the blood lands somewhere new.
I, for one, cannot wait to see what Harris comes up with next, and I can only hope that the characteristic warmth in her shots, scripts and casting stays.
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