At the Village East Cinema in Manhattan, I saw Is God Is, a 2026 Southern Gothic revenge film written and directed by Aleshea Harris, adapted from her 2018 play of the same name. The film was co-produced by Tessa Thompson and Janizca Bravo, and stars Kara Young and Mallori Johnson as Racine and Anaia, twin sisters in their twenties who are covered in burn scars, Racine's scars along her left arm and Anaia's scars on her face and upper chest. They survived a domestic violence act when their abusive father (Sterling K. Brown) had broken his restraining order and came to their home, choking their mother (Vivica A. Fox) unconscious and setting her on fire in front of the girls, leaving the girls to be burnt in the attempt to save their mother.
The girls grew up believing their mother had died, and since their father had abandoned them, they were raised in a series of foster homes, ostracized and called ugly by everyone, especially Anaia because of her facial scars, and work as janitors in an office, applying ointment to each other as a daily ritual at home. Racine is the more outspoken, adventurous one, always defending her sister, while Anaia is more reserved and has a casual relationship with a boyfriend who doesn't want to look at her during sex. Racine often teases Anaia, calling her a "little bitch" in a way to mean she's a coward. The sisters are so close and intuitive with each other that they often exchange silent conversations with knowing looks, with the dialogue of their conversation appearing on the screen.
Racine receives a letter from their mother, thought to be dead, and the twins travel to her home, where she is bed-ridden and taken care of by a team of healthcare aides, who braid her hair as she explains to them what happened. She tells them that she is dying, and that her deathbed wish is for the twins to avenge her by killing their father, for all the pain and suffering he has left behind, knowing he moved on with another woman and had more children. Their mother, who Racine calls "God" because she created them, convinces them of their hesitancy by showing her legs to them, not visible to the audience but most likely burned beyond recognition. The sisters agree to their mother's wish, and set off to find their father to enact justice.
The film is a road trip story, where the sisters encounter various characters who had been left hurt in their father's wake: an evangelical preacher named Divine (Erika Alexander) who is still devoted to their father even though he abandoned her while she was pregnant and her son, their half-brother, is now an adult; the lawyer Chuck Hall (Mykelti Williamson), a man who cannot speak anymore due to their father's violence, communicating by whiteboard, and pays a dominatrix to beat him to train him to be able to fight their father; and eventually their father's third family in the finale.
I liked how this film was bright and loud and funny, while still being serious about all the abuse and pain and trauma that this one man caused to several Black women throughout his life, and how they felt denied in their revenge and anger, and wanting to see him suffer.
Kara Young and Mallori Johnson are both excellent in the leads, with Young just popping off the screen as a charismatic star, and Johnson having a more reserved sensitivity to her performance. I liked seeing the supporting cast of well-known names (including Janelle Monae as their father's abused wife in a gilded cage), but Sterling K. Brown as their father was chilling, in playing the father with a soft voice but a psychopathic violence, excusing his past actions as "I was young and didn't know better," despite being an adult then and continuing to harm people on a path of destruction.
I heard of this movie from a Bluesky tweet from the YouTuber Princess Weekes, who loved the film, and I'm glad I took her recommendation, this was a little gem of a movie.
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