‘Is God Is’ Wants Catharsis Through Violence, Replacing Forgiveness With Vengeance
Editor’s note: This review contains spoilers.
(REVIEW) Vengeance has always been a part of both religion and Hollywood.
From Biblical images of God wiping out all the firstborn sons in Egypt, to Dirty Harry bringing cowboy justice to serial killers and street thugs, people always seem to have an appetite for a righteous figure bringing wrath on those who’ve hurt or oppressed others.
Aleshea Harris wants to give that same narrative catharsis to black women like herself. “Is God Is,” her film directorial debut, is based on her award-winning play of the same name. It follows twin sisters on a quest to kill their father, who disfigured them as children.
READ: ‘Cast Aside The Clouds’ Shines A Light On Iran And The Bahá’í Faith
“I want moviegoers to think about the inherent value of Black women,” Harris explained. “I want Black women and girls to feel affirmed in their anger. I want them to think about the impact of it, but I don't like this notion that we don't get to be mad, because we have a lot to be mad about.”
Unfortunately, Harris’ film does more than simply offer fictional frontier-style justice to typically underrepresented audiences. It goes so far as to renounce the virtue of forgiveness altogether and re-imagine faith along decidedly tribal, gendered lines to justify it.
“Is God Is” tells the story of twin sisters “Racine the Rough One” (played by Kara Young) and “Anaia the Quiet One” (Mallori Johnson) who always stick together. Racine always protects Anaia – often with physical violence — when she’s bullied for her facial scars.
The girls received their scars at a young age after their father started a house fire with the intention of killing the girls and their mother. The girls grow up assuming their mother died in the fire (they decide to call her God “because she made us”) and are surprised to find out she was alive after all. They visit her on her deathbed and she tells the girls, who are now young women, to kill their father (Sterling K. Brown).
The film has been compared to a Tarantino revenge thriller, like “Kill Bill” or “Django Unchained,” And the comparisons aren’t unwarranted. You have unpredictable, violent characters on a trail of revenge, spilling the blood of other characters. All done in a very self-aware and highly stylized filmmaking voice.
“Is God Is” wants to make serious, overt points about all the social ills that it feels need to be corrected today, and each character the young women meet on the journey represents some specific social ill that’s allowed their abusive father, “The Monster,” played to perfection by Sterling K. Brown, to escape justice.
“Is God Is” is strongest when it vividly expresses the bond between twin sisters. The way it uses onscreen text to portray the uncanny ability twins often seem to have to read each other’s thoughts. The way it uses a split screen to make the twins seem to be right next to each other, even when they’re apart.
The film also has some success with giving a tonally distinct “Female Avenger” genre thriller. It grounds it more from the “over the top” depictions of wacky villains and epic fights in films like “Kill Bill.”
But this grounded approach also works against the film. The sisters’ encounters with their enemies are neither as spectacularly creative as “Kill Bill” nor as developed as “A Promising Young Woman.” As a result, you end up feeling the formula and the predictability of the encounters.
Likewise, its attempt at a subversive catharsis rings false and therefore falls flat. Essentially, the film makes you think it's ultimately going to be a message for forgiveness and against revenge, but ends up being against forgiveness and for revenge.
The film portrays the final revenge as completely satisfying Racine and Anaia’s pain and trauma, and ending the cycle of violence. Yet none of the problems of discrimination they experienced at the beginning of the film are solved by it.
And the way they justified the escalation of violence — and the way that violence was justified by the ending — doesn’t give any reason to believe they won’t continue the cycle. The problem they set up at the beginning, and the way it plays out up until the third act, doesn’t feel satisfied by just falling back on old-fashioned Hollywood revenge fantasies.
“Is God Is” is playing now in theaters.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.