I saw something on Threads about how Is God Is would be leaving theaters last week, so I booked myself a double feature at the 34th Street AMC theater, where I had to sit in the front row because almost all the seats were sold out. The movie just released on May 15 and is getting great reviews, so I didn’t understand why it would be fading from theaters so fast. But when I checked showtimes today, it was still running in a number of theaters. And that makes me glad. I want a lot of people to see it because it’s an impressive directorial debut for writer and actress Aleshea Harris.
I think it was probably easier for Harris to translate her vision on-screen since Is God Is started as a play and has been staged multiple times in the last few years, hailed as a bright new voice. The movie’s set in the Dirty South where twin sisters Racine (played by Kara Young) and Anaia (played by Mallori Johnson) work as janitors in an office building. The twins were horribly burned in a fire during their youth, which they don’t really remember, and Racine is left with a scarred arm, while Anaia is less fortunate, having burns all over her face that she can’t hide.
I think it was probably easier for Harris to translate her vision on-screen since Is God Is started as a play and has been staged multiple times in the last few years, hailed as a bright new voice. The movie’s set in the Dirty South where twin sisters Racine (played by Kara Young) and Anaia (played by Mallori Johnson) work as janitors in an office building. The twins were horribly burned in a fire during their youth, which they don’t really remember, and Racine is left with a scarred arm, while Anaia is less fortunate, having burns all over her face that she can’t hide.
The twins are introduced as having fire in their veins, and they tend to their burns with ice cubes during the story in contemplative moments. Apparently, that’s an old home remedy that’s been recommended for lightening burn scars. I don’t know if it really works, but I like the idea that the twins run so hot that they have to physically cool themselves down. The special effects burn makeup was done well and always looked the same from scene to scene. Makeup artist Richard Redlefsen says on his Instagram, “Burn scar makeups always have to have a fine balance between clinical, horror, and in this case beautiful. The sculptural forms really sell the scarring trauma, so less is more. I wanted the scarring to disappear, and we see the real beauty after we meet Anaia and focus on the real meaning of the sisters’ journey. The makeup should be an afterthought.”
Racine is the twin who got all the mean while Anaia is known as the more emotional sister, and the women are fired from their jobs after Racine loses her temper with an office worker who’s horrified by Anaia’s appearance. With nothing else left to do, the sisters arrive home to find a letter addressed to Racine from their mother, who wants to see them before she dies. The twins grew up in a series of rough foster homes and always thought their mother had died in the fire that had disfigured them. Now they have a mission, and during an evening where they debate options through psychic twin messages (shown on-screen in white handwritten font), they decide they’ll roadtrip to see their mother (played by Vivica A. Fox), who they refer to as God because she made them. I wonder how Harris conveyed the psychic twin dialogue in the play. I’ll have to keep an eye out for future productions so I can see how this is done in the play version.
The movie is a modern Western as the twins travel through the South in their dilapidated car, serving as their horse, with backpacks and a grooming kit each. I love the moments where they’re shown sleeping in their car, brushing their teeth in unconventional places, or peeing outdoors as nods to the old buddy Western films that my dad and grandpa liked. And there’s such a joyful moment as the twins pose and dance beneath the Welcome to Virginia road sign that reminds me of past road trips I’ve been on, the hours or days it takes to cross one state and that spark of happiness you get once you pass the border into a new state.
They arrive at their mother’s house, seeing her on her deathbed as she’s attended to by three helpers who are braiding her hair with nail clicks, reminding me of a Greek chorus in Euripides’s plays (definitely one of the influences on God Is God). Fox gives a commanding performance as she tells her daughters their origin story and how they all received their burn scars from domestic abuse at the hands of their father. This scene gives one of the best pieces of dialogue that’s been going through my head on repeat the entire weekend: “He pull the curtain aside. And just stands there, no smile or nothin. No frown, neither. Face as plain as a slice of wheat bread.”
Then God delivers her last request: Kill him, and make it really bad as revenge for what he did to us. The twins debate this with little dialogue and lots of psychic twin language before embarking on the quest to find their dad in the sunny climes of LA. Their mother provided them with the name of the last woman who played into their father’s hands, and from there, they find his onetime lawyer who got him off of domestic violence and attempted murder charges. Eventually, the twins find where their father lives, in a gorgeous mansion kept neat and tidy by his new wife (Janelle Monáe) with his new perfect family. It’s such a contrast to the twins’ hardscrabble upbringing as they glimpse a pool in the backyard after struggling to find water after a grueling Greyhound bus trip.
There’s lots of violence as the sisters mete out revenge, but I think what’s so chilling is how plain and ordinary their father (Sterling K. Brown) is when they finally meet him compared to the evil he’s caused in the world. He’s still quite sinister in his actions and speech, though he changes into slippers from his outside shoes like he’s Mr. Rogers. It feel like a statement on the nature of evil, showing that it’s all around in the mundane details of life.
This movie brought up intergenerational trauma and is definitely Southern gothic, just like in S. A. Cosby’s novel King of Ashes, and I’m loving how the same themes come up between my reading and viewing. It makes me feel like I’m going in the right direction, my choices coming instinctually, like how you’ll drive on a dark road at night just trusting that the highway will spool out indefinitely in front of you.