Is God Is Review: Vengeance, Violence, and Voice to Black Rage

Aleshea Harris has arrived. Not crept in, not eased through a back door — arrived. Is God Is, her debut feature and adaptation of her own Obie Award-winning 2018 play, hit US theatres on 15 May 2026, and it is already sitting at a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes with a Metacritic score of 84. Those aren't numbers you earn by playing it safe.

The film follows twin sisters Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson) — scarred survivors of a fire set deliberately by their father when they were babies. They receive a letter from their mother, Ruby (Vivica A. Fox), the woman they thought had died in that same fire. Ruby is alive. She is dying. And she has one instruction: find their father — The Monster — and make him dead. "Dead. Dead. Dead."

So begins a revenge road trip soaked in Southern Gothic atmosphere, spaghetti western swagger, and Old Testament fury.

The Mission From God

What Harris is doing here is not subtle, and it's not trying to be. Racine and Anaia's mother is literally referred to as God — she made them, didn't she? — and their task is framed from the start as divine commandment. It's the kind of premise that could tip easily into self-parody, but Harris holds the tonal wire with both hands and doesn't flinch. The magical realism that runs through Is God Is — silent conversations between the twins translated via on-screen captions, a narrator who rotates between characters, a geography that operates more like myth than map — all of it reads as confident direction, not indulgence.

The influences are worn openly: Blaxploitation, Greek tragedy, Tarantino, Southern Gothic literature, and the photography of Deana Lawson. According to RogerEbert.com, Harris has also clearly absorbed the work of Kasi Lemmons and Octavia Butler. That's a lot of weight to carry in a debut. She carries it.

The Rough One and the Quiet One

The film lives and dies on Kara Young and Mallori Johnson, and both of them deliver. Young's Racine is a force — all forward momentum and barely contained heat. Johnson plays Anaia's quieter resistance as something just as powerful; her character senses the moral rot beneath the mission even as she follows it. Their sibling dynamic is volatile, loving, and never cheap.

Sterling K. Brown as the father — listed in the credits only as "The Monster" — is genuinely terrifying in exactly the way you don't expect from him. He's not a raving villain. He is ordinary. Sociopathically, chillingly ordinary. That choice is Harris's sharpest political move. The banality of patriarchal violence as a concept is easy to say in a thesis; it is much harder to make a viewer feel it in the gut. This film manages it.

Vivica A. Fox, Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, and Mykelti Williamson round out a supporting cast that, frankly, you don't usually get in a debut. Tessa Thompson serves as producer, which perhaps explains some of the muscle behind the project.

Does It Stick the Landing?

Alas — and it is a mild alas — the third act stumbles. As noted in The Globe and Mail's review, the long-awaited face-off between the twins and their father lands softer than the film earns. For a movie that has been building its monster via absence — a haunting offscreen presence felt in every scarred inch of skin on screen — the final meeting feels curtailed. You wanted the confrontation to hit like a freight train. It hits more like a careful exhale.

Don't get me wrong. It doesn't undo what came before. It just leaves you wanting a final act that matches the first two.

UK Note

Is God Is is currently theatrical-only, with no confirmed UK cinema date or streaming window as of yet. Given that Amazon MGM Studios is the distributor, it is a fairly safe bet that the film will eventually land on Prime Video in the UK — though no timeline has been confirmed. UK audiences keen to catch it sooner will want to keep an eye on arthouse cinema listings. It's the kind of film that deserves a big screen and a dark room.

Is God Is is a 97-minute R-rated revenge thriller from Orion Pictures. It is in US theatres now. A UK release date has not yet been announced.

We'll keep you posted on updates about Is God Is as the project develops.