Is God Is – Review

A mesmerizing experience is contained inside Is God Is. The film ushers in a clever, surreal and dreamlike atmosphere which is somehow also all too realistic, stark and unsettling at times which snaps viewers back to reality. The story presented within opens with twin sisters, Racine (Young) and Anaia (Johnson), who have grown up through severe hardship into young women. They have various degrees of skin scarring from a childhood fire.

The young girls were sure this traumatic event had killed their mother Ruby (Fox) as it sent them into foster care, yet years later they receive a letter from her. Interesting. The twins remain forever burned from this fire, the scarring physical as well as emotional. Racine’s arm and shoulder were permanently damaged, but she could get by; however, Anaia was left with facial disfigurement. This left the girls bonding even more so against the rest of the world than most siblings.

As the pair visit Ruby they find she isn’t doing well and find out the full story of their awful hauntingly abusive father (Brown) and the fire he started. The event left Ruby also struggling with health issues and burns, and now her time on the Earth is up. She wants him to pay. The twins understand their past finally. So, how will it drive their lives now? Will their last request from Ruby, aka their creator, aka God, be too much for them, or will they see it through?

The acting showcased from all parties is hypnotic. Young and Johnson are fantastic as the main duo, but everyone does a very strong job in support roles, which was a must for this interesting script. It builds its own type of lore and needed its actors to play it seriously and pull it off. The cast is talented and gets to do a lot here dramatically to prove it.

If you are looking for something fairly fresh and interesting, check this one out. It’s a fairly atypical revenge drama. It has a vibrant cultural backdrop for a metaphorical religious thriller and holds a decent script with some wild swings. It combines a vast mix of elements and is a quality affair, just know it goes into deep, serious and salient territory so be brave, but at least it will give you plenty to think about and is often hard to anticipate.