Debut filmmaker Aleshea Harris' Is God Is comes across as a thoroughly misguided affair. A story of two sisters, Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson) who search for their long lost father (Sterling K. Brown) in order to kill him for past wrongs. When they were little, father burned their mother (Vivica A. Fox), and when the girls tried to help her, the flame scarred them as well.
Is God Is starts off as an off-kilter, adult dramedy, before switching gears into a tale of inauthentic vengeance (early on, Racine's demeanor from not wanting to commit violence to agreeing to kill her father occurs within three seconds, without convincing the audience of its credibility). In its second half, the movie turns into a poorly acted, poorly written splatterfest, where the 'guilty' are punished in awkwardly staged murders that may as well have been directed by a second year film-student.
The final act, in which the women face their father, is plain laughable. T father discovering the dead bodies of his twin sons leaves him so unaffected that he even makes himself a sandwich. Minutes later, he's crying (or pretending to; whether or not his acting is deliberately poor I'll leave for you to decide). When he dies, it is with an insignificant whimper. For all its hype on Rotten Tomatoes (currently standing at a whopping 98% - go fucking figure), the movie's tone, its dramatic narrative, is flatter than a pancake. How anyone can think this is more than an absolute amateur trash is beyond me.
☆
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