By: Lana K. Wilson-Combs
REVENGE BURNS SLOW IN THE VISCERAL AND GRITTY "IS GOD IS"
After watching the dramatic revenger thriller
"Is God Is", from writer-director
Aleshea Harris in her feature directorial debut, I only wish I had seen her 2018 play that the film is adapted from.
"Is God Is" grows on you. The cast is top notch, and the film has an old school blaxploitation vibe about it, but it also is a cautionary tale about generational trauma, faith twisted into obsession, and the devastating cost of revenge when it becomes the only language left to speak.
The film is striking and led by a fearless cast, featuring Sterling K. Brown in an outstanding, unnervingly controlled performance as "Man," the villainous and evil father whose brutality sets everything in motion.
This guy is responsible for burning his wife Ruby/God (Vivica A. Fox, TV's "The Young and the Restless”) and their twin daughters Racine (Kara Young, "I Love Boosters") and Anaia (Mallori Johnson, "Steal Away"), leaving behind physical and emotional scars that shape their entire lives.
While Racine’s burns are primarily on her arms and lower body, Anaia has had to endure the worst of the trauma. Her face is horrifically disfigured.
Brown plays Man not as a caricature, but as something far more unsettling--calm, persuasive, and deeply menacing, a presence that feels like a wound the story never stops reopening.
Young and Johnson bring raw urgency and emotional intensity to Racine and Anaia, newcomers who ground the film even as its world grows increasingly unstable.
Their journey west is not just a mission for revenge spelled out by their mother, but a confrontation with everything stolen from them: identity, safety, and truth.
Along the way, Mykelti Williamson ("The Last Rodeo") delivers a quietly devastating turn as Chuck Hall, a man already mutilated by Man's violence, including the cutting out of his tongue, a brutal detail that speaks volumes even in silence.
Janelle Monae (“Golden” and “Glass Onion”) is limited but also strong as Angie, Man's wife, raising children Riley (Justen Ross, TV's "Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist") and Scotch (Xavier Mills, TV's "Chad Powers"), all of them trapped inside a household shaped by control, fear, and inherited damage.
The sisters' search eventually leads them to Divine (Erika Alexander, TV's "The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins"), a shady pastor whose devotion to Man has curdled into something unsettling and obsessive.
Her church becomes a shrine to a man who abandoned her while she was pregnant with their son Ezekiel (Josiah Cross, "King Richard" and TV's "Lady on the Lake"), yet she clings to the belief that he will return to reclaim his place.
That warped faith mirrors the film's larger emotional current of people holding onto broken myths because letting go would mean losing themselves entirely.
"Is God Is" isn't just a revenge story but a layered exploration of what violence leaves behind and how it mutates across generations. Like Harris' award-winning play--which earned Obie Awards and the Relentless Award for its bold fusion of Spaghetti Western, hip-hop, Afropunk, and classical tragedy--the film carries that same explosive identity to the screen.
While its ambitious layering of myth, upheaval, and revenge storytelling can feel overwhelming at times, it is never without purpose, and its emotional impact only deepens with reflection.
What lingers most is not the violence itself, but the haunting idea that no one in this story is untouched by it.
Editor's Note: Be sure to catch my N2Entertainment.net movie talk segment on the Kitty O'Neal Show Fridays at 5:17 p.m. and 6:47 p.m. on radio station KFBK 93.1 FM and 1530 AM.
Watch This Trailer For
"IS GOD IS"
Lana K. Wilson-Combs is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA), The American Film Institute (AFI), and a Nominating Committee Voting Member for the NAACP Image Awards.
