‘Is God Is’ Review: Aleshea Harris Makes Her Mark With a Brash, Blazing Female Revenge Thriller

The Pulitzer-shortlisted playwright retains her raw verbal lyricism while showing a visceral cinematic touch in this tale of twin sisters out to kill their abusive father, starring Kara Young, Mallori Johnson and Sterling K. Brown.

By Guy Lodge

Guy Lodge

Film Critic

Latest

• ‘Is God Is’ Review: Aleshea Harris Makes Her Mark With a Brash, Blazing Female Revenge Thriller 1 hour ago
• ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’ Review: Sally Field and Lewis Pullman Help Each Other Heal in a Melodrama of Distinctly Average Intelligence 4 days ago
• Miranda Priestly Ignited Meryl Streep’s Populist Era, ‘Devil Wears Prada 2’ Shows She’s Still a Crowd-Pleaser 7 days ago

The kill list in “Is God Is” is a short one: a single name, and not even a name at that. The sole target of Aleshea Harris‘ incendiary revenge movie is credited only as “the Monster,” and really, he’s very much just a man. Men are the enemy here, but so are women, their children and anyone else standing between twin sisters Anaia (Mallori Johnson) and Racine (Kara Young) and their quarry: They long ago stopped seeing as human the estranged father who scarred them for life, inside and out, and so their belated mission to get him back takes on a mythically merciless dimension. Inhuman violence begets inhuman violence in “Is God Is,” a bloody, neck-snapping jolt of a film less concerned with moral justice than amoral catharsis.

Related Stories

'Highway to Heaven' Reboot Set at Fox