‘Is God Is’ is an Awfully Discomforting Revenge Thriller

May 11, 2026

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Well… IS God is? (PHOTO CREDIT: Patti Perret
© 2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

Starring: Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Sterling K. Brown, Vivica A. Fox, Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, Josiah Cross

Director: Aleshea Harris

Running Time: 100 Minutes

Rating: R for Extreme Violence and Unfettered Language

Release Date: May 15, 2026 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Twins Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson) have only had themselves to rely on ever since their dad (Sterling K. Brown) set their mom Ruby (Vivica A. Fox) on fire in a bathtub when they were little girls. The attack left burn marks up and down Rachine’s arm and all over Anaia’s face, leading the rest of the world to look down upon them as ugly outcasts. It also left their mom dead… or so they thought until one day when Ruby summons them and gives them a mission: kill their daddy. So they head out on their odyssey of revenge, encountering a colorfully alarming cast of new wives (Erika Alexander, Janelle Monáe) and half-siblings along the way. They’re frequently warned that their vengeance is just not worth it, but the pull to finally eliminate this monster is hard to resist.

What Made an Impression?: How Did It Get This Evil?: I thought Is God Is was going to be more stylized. The trailer certainly made it seem that way, and it’s a common tactic for making a premise like this more palatable. But instead, it’s a much, much more difficult watch. I wouldn’t exactly call it as realistic as possible, but it does force you to confront an environment where domestic violence is inescapable.
What’s the Takeaway?: With its unflinching approach to the subject matter, one would hope (or at least I would hope) that there could be an effort towards profundity. So what is the overarching message of Is God Is? Is it that vengeance destroys everyone caught in its trail? Is it that it’s better to escape the cycle of violence when you have the chance? Or is it that sometimes you inexplicably can’t escape even if you want to? There are elements of all of that here, but I’d be hard-pressed to tell you exactly what writer/director Aleshea Harris (adapting her play of the same name) wants to send us off with. Perhaps that confusion is the point. If so, it might be more frightening than she reckoned for.
Like They’re Going to Explode: So when I bemoaned this movie’s lack of stylization, I kind of lied. Or rather, I omitted just how over-the-top some of the performances are. Although maybe that’s not stylization, but instead just how some people would really behave in this scenario. Either way, watching the likes of Vivica A. Fox, Mykelti Williamson, and Janelle Monáe chew up the set like we know they can is easily the most enjoyable element of this movie. As the leads, Young and Johnson are required to be a little subdued, though they do have fun with their telepathic twin communication. Sterling K. Brown has quite a time biting into a rare opportunity to play the villain, but it’s Erika Alexander as a God-fearing jilted wife who leaves the biggest impression of “What the heck is going on here?” It’s what I’ll choose to remember more than the utter despair.

Is God Is is Recommended If You Like: Lifetime movies and ’70s revenge flicks

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Burn Scars

A Touch of Time Travel: ‘Don’t Let Go’ Review

September 6, 2019

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CREDIT: Sundance Institute

Okay, so: Don’t Let Go is about a homicide detective (David Oyelowo) whose brother, sister-in-law, and niece are brutally murdered, and then he starts getting phone calls from his dead niece (Storm Reid), but it seems that she’s still alive, because she’s calling from … THE PAST! Yeah, so I’m hooked.

Det. Oyelowo gets right into it, directing Storm to start doing some covert investigating of her own in the hopes of altering the timeline. Of course then Don’t Let Go bumps up against a common time travel conundrum, i.e., if the past is altered, how will that affect the present, and will anyone remember the original past timeline, and if so, will that make sense? Or will it turn out that any “alterations” were a part of the original timeline all along, with any attempts to make changes proving instead to be a recursive insurance that it will all end up the same way?

Don’t Let Go actually manages to pull off the former in a way that makes enough cinematic sense to get by (and the shifts are rendered visually in satisfyingly disorienting fashion), as the past and present seem to be tethered together on an inflection point. And if we want to, we can say that the phone conversations are the portal that allows for the callers to have memories of multiple timelines. That being said, there are relatively few moments when the timeline is actually altered, and it certainly feels like there could be more. But I wonder if it had been bulkier that way, maybe it would have been too much to keep track of. So I’m mostly satisfied. Alfred Molina plays a reliable authority figure! It’s a fun genre experiment!

I give Don’t Let Go My Agreement to Complete Its Weird Requests.