‘IS GOD IS’ – An Unholy Quest from the Dark Roots of Magical Realism

2025 reminded Hollywood that original storytelling can still move the needle and the crowds. 2026 seems determined to prove it. Mixed in with the franchises and reboots, we’ve gotten some highly entertaining or engaging originals and adaptations. However, nothing prepared me for how hard Is God Is would hit.

When I saw the trailer for Aleshea Harris’ adaptation of her stage play of the same name, I immediately thought of Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. Not that I thought the films had the same creatives, but because they felt like they might exist side-by-side in an anthology about the twists and turns of Black Southern culture. Also, Sterling K. Brown is playing the villain. What I didn’t expect was a bloody work of peak monstrous feminine storytelling about twin sisters on an unholy quest dug up from the dark roots of magical realism. Amazingly, that’s what Harris gave. So much so, my first word out of the theater was: Brilliant.

The story begins and ends with the twins, Racine (Kara Young), the hostile & explosive one, and Anaia (Mallori Johnson), the calm & rational one. The pair was badly injured in a fire as little girls and sent into foster care; they still bear the scars from both experiences. Racine has fused fingers and burn scars up one arm. Anaia is extensively burned across her face and upper body. Early on, Harris makes sure we understand these old wounds are still fresh, revealing how the twins soothe themselves by rubbing each other’s scars with ice.

They only have each other. Until they receive a letter from their mother, Ruby (Vivica A. Fox)—a woman Racine calls God. Why? It’s a miracle she survived; more importantly, she created them. How could she not be divine? Ruby tasks the girls with an unholy quest: Make your daddy dead. Racine eagerly accepts, but Anaia doesn’t believe they have killing in them. They’re about to find out who’s right.

Written and directed by Harris and starring Young, Johnson, Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, Josiah Cross, with Fox and Brown, the film is an infinitely fascinating odyssey of murder in the blood, witchy women, and vengeance. Through surprising plot beat after plot beat, Is God Is buries the seeds of the adage “before you embark on a journey for revenge, dig two graves”—perhaps twin graves—then watches those seeds grow, and plucks their poisoned fruit.

It is brilliantly written, endlessly layered filmmaking that gets you excited. It’s also aesthetically vivid, almost poetic at times, and Southern gothic to its bones. The poetry is in the telepathy between the twins, represented in their unspoken words cascading across the screen. Or in the rich saturated colors and hints of magical realism in the storytelling and production design. Imagine the Blaxploitation¹ genre reclaimed to examine the weight women bear when the wrong men hold power.

As Racine and Anaia follow the trail of women and mayhem their father (Brown) left behind, they meet religious zealots who worship the patriarchy in a new way, and survivors of their father’s wrath who disturbingly keep their trauma alive. Eventually, they learn they’re not as alone as they thought, while the truth behind their origin story is revealed in an ending you will never see coming.

Young and Johnson could easily be nominated for Oscars—Young already has two Emmys—and Brown gives a best supporting actor award-worthy turn. Sterling is as good at being the villain as he is at being lovable. Alexander and Monáe give nuanced but surreal performances that balance their characters’ rightness with an insidious wrong that’ll make you ask: Who is at fault? It’s an answer you’ll have to find for yourself. Getting there is the brutal, tragic, bloody fun of Is God Is.

I can’t stop thinking about it. Aleshea Harris is a filmmaker to watch. Her symbolic movie has the eerie allure of a tall tale entwined with gothic storytelling and the rage of the monstrous feminine. Is God Is twists, turns, and burns like a snake in the guts—sometimes tickling you into laughter but always venomous. And, yes, it’s brilliant.

1. In American cinema, Blaxploitation is the film subgenre of action movie derived from the exploitation film genre that began in the 1960s and flourished throughout the early to mid 1970s, consequent to the combined cultural momentum of the black civil rights movement and the black power movement, political and sociological circumstances that facilitated black artists reclaiming their power of the representation of the black ethnic identity in the arts. The term blaxploitation is a portmanteau of the words Black and exploitation, coined by Junius Griffin, president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood branch of the NAACP in 1972. In criticizing the Hollywood portrayal or mockery of the multiracial society of the US, Griffin said that the blaxploitation genre was “proliferating offenses” to and against the black community, by perpetuating racist stereotypes of inherent criminality. from Wikipedia ↩︎