Somehow Is God Is slipped completely by me. I remember seeing it listed when it was opening in theaters, and it was a film starring Sterling K. Brown and Vivica A. Fox, and I immediately thought, why is this being released theatrically? I also thought it was probably a Christian movie, and it is anything but. It’s amazing what happens when you actually know what something is about, but I skip nearly every trailer for a film, so I work largely off of what studios send me and what other critics are talking about. It wasn’t until after Is God Is opened that I started seeing critics clocking this as being a pleasant surprise. So eventually I got around to it, and it is, in fact, a pleasant surprise.
First-time feature director Aleshea Harris, who also wrote the stage play on which the film is based, lends her unique stylings behind the camera and shows that she has a ton of potential for future projects. The story centers around twin sisters Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson), who grew up in foster care after surviving a house fire that left both of them scarred. Their mother, Ruby (Vivica A. Fox), was even more severely burned and unable to care for her daughters. Now grown adults, Racine and Anaia learn that their mother wants to see them as she lies dying. They go to hear her final plea, which isn’t exactly to make sure someone waters her plants. Ruby wants them to find their father, the man responsible for burning them in the first place, and kill him.
The film takes somewhat of a quasi-biblical approach mixed with The Odyssey, and it reminded me of everything from Tarantino to the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? as these two women traverse their way from one last-known location to another, encountering people connected to their father along the way. It almost plays like a video game where you’re reaching checkpoints. You enter a house, talk to somebody, get information from them, determine the fate or future of the person you’re talking to, get past that stage, and reach the next level. All of that comes with the end goal of eventually getting to their father, played by Sterling K. Brown.
As Racine and Anaia move forward, they also start musing on their lives, how they got there, what they’re willing to do, and exactly how far they’re willing to go to fulfill their mother’s final request. One sister is far more willing to deliver that fatal blow than the other, and they continually find themselves in predicaments requiring a little bit more from them than perhaps they initially thought they were willing to give. Harris plays with the connection between these twin sisters, the connections between half-brothers and sisters, and this idea that one man can move through all of these different families and leave completely different versions of himself behind. He can leave one woman waiting for him to return while another can’t wait to escape what she feels trapped in. Everybody seems to have had a different experience with him, for better or worse.
The ensemble is pretty deep in terms of recognizable faces that pop up along the way, including Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, Josiah Cross, Xavier Mills, and Justen Ross. But everybody is really waiting to get to Sterling K. Brown and see his possible mustache-twirling villain. Instead, Brown plays him coy, almost as though this entire thing has been some gigantic misunderstanding, and that’s what makes the dynamic interesting. There’s a journey in the middle, but there’s essentially a he-said-she-said at the beginning and end. Racine and Anaia have to decide what to believe, who to believe, and whether everything they’ve done to get to this point is ultimately worth it. Their father remains an enigma, and that’s one of the more powerful elements Harris has within her film.
Brown is great at being a really tough read, and the most negative thing I can say about him is that he doesn’t have enough screen time. For parts of the film leading up to his big entrance, he’s sort of cut off so that you aren’t supposed to be able to see the totality of his face until he’s actually present. Which is kind of weird, because I think most people knew Sterling K. Brown was in this when they went to see it. I think I would have recognized Sterling K. Brown even if it was only half his face, and this is coming from a blind film critic. Vivica A. Fox also has limited screen time, but considering she was once grazing the Sharknado franchise, I would say she’s come a long way, and I’m sure she was grateful to be cast in this production because, if nothing else, it’s not a Sharknado movie.
There are so many influences seemingly bouncing around inside Harris’s head that I would love to know what her favorite films of all time are. Sometimes you sit down with a director and hear about everything that influenced them along the way, and Harris has such a unique voice and vision that she feels like some combination of everything from the Man with No Name trilogy to various representations of blaxploitation, the way Quentin Tarantino shoots and frames violence, and even Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi films, at least in terms of the revenge elements. If she told me Akira Kurosawa was an influence, I’d believe that too. She doesn’t feel like a striking new Black female director who is necessarily looking only toward filmmakers who resemble her for inspiration. She seems to be pulling from this entire world of cinema and filtering all of it through her own perspective.
That’s what makes Is God Is feel so singular. The way it’s shot and framed, the way it’s structured, the writing, the violence, the performances, everything suggests there will only be one film like this this year, and it will stand entirely on its own. In terms of exciting new directors, Harris really turns out to be one of the brightest of the bunch. This has already been a year with notable feature debuts from YouTubers Curry Barker and Kane Parsons, who managed to turn heads with low-budget horror films. Harris is coming from a completely different direction, but she belongs in that conversation about filmmakers whose first features immediately make you wonder what they’re going to do next.
I don’t know how many more plays Harris has sitting around that she wants to adapt for the big screen, and I don’t really care whether her next film comes from one of those plays or an entirely new idea. Considering this summer also gave us a new Boots Riley film, I hesitate to go so far as to call Harris the next Boots Riley after seeing only one feature, but there’s something similarly specific about her style. I just need that second film or second project to validate that what we’re seeing here is a truly singular voice and vision. We have filmmakers like Jane Schoenbrun building that kind of auteur clout right now, where you know whose film you’re watching because nobody else would have made it quite that way. Is God Is makes me think Harris could be heading toward that same territory.
Sadly, I don’t think Is God Is is going to get the recognition at the Oscars that it probably deserves. It opened in May and didn’t do the kind of theatrical business that makes me confident it will still be sitting at the front of voters’ minds several months from now. Plus, Amazon MGM is far more likely to spend millions pushing something like Project Hail Mary than Is God Is. Still, this could become a critical darling, and I hope Amazon realizes what they have in Harris and gets her into as many conversations as possible for first-time feature directing. It would be killer to see her somehow land among the DGA nominees because even if Is God Is doesn’t become a major awards contender, this is absolutely the kind of debut that should have people paying attention to the person who made it.
I also really liked the audio description for Is God Is. This is an occasionally violent film, but there’s so much style and richness to this world that the audio description has quite a bit to bring to life. That becomes especially important with a film where Harris has clearly put so much thought into the way the violence, characters, and environments are presented. The audio description gives blind audiences access to that stylistic identity instead of leaving us with only the dialogue and performances, and I appreciated what the track brought to the experience.
If you want to see something that feels amazingly fresh, is full of an ensemble firing on all cylinders, and is nothing if not incredibly unique and interesting, then Is God Is has to be on your bucket list for the year. Tired of sequels, franchises, reboots, and the usual rinse and repeat? Well, this is nothing like that. This is a bold new vision from a hot new director who seems ready to take Hollywood by storm. I went into Is God Is having somehow completely missed what everyone else had already figured out about it, and came out wondering what Aleshea Harris is going to do next. That’s one hell of a first impression.
Fresh: 8.3/10
