IS GOD IS Movie Review | Kara Young | Mallori Johnson | Aleshea Harris

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]This is, I think, one of the best films of the year so far, no question. I really hope people see it.

[00:00:06]So many of you guys asked us to review Is God Is. Alonzo had seen it. I needed to catch up with it, and I'm so glad that I did. So, here is a quick little catch-up review for you. This is very much the kind of challenging indie that we love to talk about around here. So, if that interests you as well, come subscribe and hang out with us. Alonzo, what happens here? We ain't killers. How we going to live with ourselves if we do this?

[00:00:33]This destiny type [ __ ] >> [music] >> So, yeah, playwright Alicia Harris makes her debut as a writer-director adapting her own acclaimed play about twin sisters Racine and Anaia, played by Car Young and Mallory Johnson. Um they are adult twins who live together. They do a lot of telepathic communication. They both have rather significant burns on their body. Uh Racine on her arm and back, and Anaia on her face and chest.

[00:01:05]We find out later it's because uh their father tried to set their mother on fire. They have assumed all this time that their mother was dead, but uh Racine gets a letter from her asking them to come down south to see her on her deathbed.

[00:01:20]They do.

[00:01:21]It is Vivica A. Fox. She is burned even more severely, and she has one uh commission for her daughters before she dies, and that is uh kill make your daddy dead, real dead. Uh and this sets them off on a road trip um that involves a um a living room preacher, uh a mute uh ambulance chaser, uh and a very swanky house that might even contain another set of twins. Um this is thrilling. I love this movie so much um because this is the kind of first film from somebody who doesn't isn't afraid of what they do and don't know. So, I think Alicia Harris is really going for it in a lot of ways and she's making a lot of jumps that she is expecting the audience to be able to keep up with in terms of time and place, the idea of the South as opposed to necessarily specific locations within the South, um, the relationships between the two sisters particularly, but also with, um, their parents, the idea of if God is the creator, what does that make your mama, you know, uh, a lot of stuff here.

[00:02:33]There's a lot of great ideas, but it's also like a really tight, fun genre exercise at the same time. The performances are great.

[00:02:41]Um, this is, I think, one of the best films of the year so far, no question. I really hope people see it. Uh, I think this is a very exciting piece of work from an exciting new filmmaker.

[00:02:52]I would never have known this was a play. I right? I think if you I didn't either and I found out afterwards, I was like, if you don't know that going in, there's this is so cinematic. It does not feel like, oh, we're all got to got to we're going to move to the outside of the house and then back to the inside of the house like cuz it's a play. This is this is a very much a movie.

[00:03:11]It's an epic. It's an epic quest in a lot of ways spanning so much of America and and the dialogue also doesn't feel like theatrically stage bound, you know, there's not like a uh, I don't know, contrived quality to it. It feels alive and thrilling and I love that bond between these two actresses. They are so well drawn. It's so much more nuanced than just like, here is the brash one and here is the quiet one. Right? Here is the brave one, here's the more contemplative one. Um, they are truly complementing one another and that love feels real, that protective nature feels real. I love the playful way in which they use the telepathy, how they indicate on screen that that they are, you know, communicating with each other.

[00:03:59]Um, and just that they have each other's backs, and there's there's so much humor for a movie that is about trauma. Yeah.

[00:04:07]About overcoming generational trauma, about stigmas and racism and society and abuse, overcoming cycles of abuse. Yeah.

[00:04:18]It's a really funny movie, and it's bold and it's lively. And um, they're both great, but like Kara Young is a freaking star. I mean, they're both excellent, but she gets she gets the showy role of the two. And Naia's role has some some quiet heart to it, you know? But but but Kara Young gets that that really showy role of being like the the more, I don't know, the agitator, you know?

[00:04:42]>> Yeah, Kara Young is a major presence in theater. She won She's apparently the first actress of color to win two consecutive Tonys. Um, and she also pops up this week in Boots Riley's I Love Boosters, uh, having been in Boots Riley's Amazon show I'm a Virgo. Uh, but I was not really familiar with her work until now. But yeah, this is just dynamite work here. And Mallory Johnson, as you say, with the less showy role, all the same, like the two of them are really holding the screen. The bigger names kind of come in and out of the movie, like you get your big Vivica A.

[00:05:12]Fox scene, you get your big Erika Alexander scene, and your big Janelle Monáe scene, and your Michael T.

[00:05:17]Williamson scene, and Sterling K. Brown is so [ __ ] evil in this movie that the movie can't even show him to you until almost the end of the film. You see like his mouth, his hand, his back, his eyes. Like there's two it it's too awful to take in all of this man's wickedness. Uh, and so they have to save it for you, but like yeah, they're all great and they come in and they make their moments pop. But these two leads who are carrying through the whole story are doing, you know, the Lord's work here. Yeah, Sterling K.

[00:05:47]it's a huge departure for him. You know, we think of him as more of a dramatic actor, a sympathetic figure quite frequently, but the same kind of charisma that he brings to every other kind of performance he's given. Yeah.

[00:06:00]>> He brings to this really deeply evil role. And so there's a conversation that happens late in the film that he delivers in such a smooth way, this whole monologue that you're almost like, well, he's got a point there. I kind of think I understand what he's saying.

[00:06:16]>> The villain doesn't think he's a villain, you know, that's the thing. And he's doing that brilliantly.

[00:06:21]Yeah, no, it's so great. And all yeah, the the supporting performances are fun and they're playful and they they pop as you say. I love the whole Janelle Monáe segment because there's more to her than meets the eye in the beginning. Uh yeah, I love this too. I I wish the title weren't that title cuz I think it seems off-putting and a little confusing. I'm like, wait, what is this movie? What is it about? But um I love the fact that it is is rooted in what feels like a modern-day America, but there's also kind of like a liminal space quality to it that's kind of magical. Like there's a surrealism to it as far as how they occupy space, how time works here.

[00:07:02]>> place to place. There's and then there's also like again, [clears throat] I mean there is talk about God. There's clearly this idea of of Sterling K. Brown as the the devil. And there's more than a little of David and Goliath by the time you realize Racine's sort of weapon of choice is a a rock in a sock, you know.

[00:07:20]>> [laughter] >> Um so yeah, so Harris is is is giving you sort of a contemporary America, but she's also playing into like you know, these sort of literary traditions of like the Zora Neale Hurston South or the Faulkner South or the the Flannery O'Connor South, you know, where it's like humid as [ __ ] and someone's going to die, you know, like [laughter] all All that is in there, too. Yeah, like it could be the 70s, but then also they're playing a Prince song. Right.

[00:07:45]Yeah, so it kind of plays with different cultural references there. Yeah, this is excellent. What is your number then on Is God Is? It's a 9.6. It's going to be a hell of a year if this doesn't wind up in my top 10. I'm I'm just so thrilled by this movie. Yeah, I was going to say like a 9.2. It is It is thrilling is a great word for it. Like as as dark and as scary and as as deep in the trauma as it is, it's also really exciting filmmaking. So, Is God Is is definitely playing at a theater near you. Go check it out.