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On a Mission from God

In the long history of revenge movies, not often has the prospect of taking revenge felt genuinely frightening. And not in the sense of the protagonists being caught and facing tangible consequence for what they consider a righteous goal but society at large will not; no, in a moral sense of doing harm and the horror of that, no matter what harmful act beget the whole idea entirely. It’s a very interesting theme that sets Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is apart from other movies of its type, and gives it a tension so many revenge thrillers don’t bother to address.
I’m especially curious about how it comes across on stage, Harris’s filmmaking debut being an adaptation of her own off-Broadway play that won a handful of Obie Awards in 2018. Certainly through stretches of this movie you wouldn’t be able to tell it was crafted for a more visually limited medium -although other aspects certainly bear the hallmarks (a series of ESP exchanges that likely originate as asides). But the themes are clearly equally powerful in both forms, and though some aspects of  cinematic execution are hampered, Harris proves capable of bridging them to the big screen largely without issue.
Kara Young and Mallori Johnson play a pair of orphaned  fraternal twins scarred by trauma and tragedy, quite literally. Racine (Young) has severe burns all down her left arm while Anaia (Johnson) has more significant burns covering her face, neck, and upper chest -all of which have to be attended to regularly with ice. Not clear on what happened to them when they were children, the sisters are summoned south to their estranged mother played by Vivica A. Fox -who (as the person who created them) they often refer to as God- now dying after suffering years of the same much more drastic affliction. She tells them the story of how their psychotic abusive father (Sterling K. Brown) set her on fire while the girls burned trying to save her -afterwards, he got off for the crime. Now, God instructs her daughters to seek out and exact vengeance on their father, something Racine is enthusiastic about, while Anaia is somewhat troubled by.
The dichotomy and chemistry between these two characters is the story’s strongest asset, each vividly defined and compelling to watch. A big part of this is down to casting. While Harris fills out the cast with some bigger name stars like Fox, Brown, and Janelle Monáe, it’s fascinating and exciting that for her leads she chose Young, a two-time Tony winner (and four-time nominee in the span of four years) but with little widespread exposure, and Johnson, a Julliard grad with a scant resume that includes just one leading role in last year’s Steal Away -a movie that has still not received a general release. This movie is an excellent showcase of both. Young vacillates incredibly organically between the loving, mean, and unpredictably scary sides of her character, while Johnson does a wonderful job embodying the moral centre of the film -in her timid demeanour you feel the struggles of everyday judgement due to her scars, yet it is not something that defines her. Anaia has rage as much as Racine does, but she has more intelligence in how she uses it. Racine can’t modulate like her sister, but her choices too -for as extreme as they may be- resonate with the weight of her sadness and fury. The two clearly need each other, as much as their contradictions fuel the movie’s moral conflicts.
The journey is a kind of odyssey of encounters with various characters and imprecise locations through the American rural south. Erika Alexander plays a fringe evangelical church leader called Divine who had been their father’s partner during the arson trial and whom he eventually left with an illegitimate son Ezekiel (Josiah Cross). Yet she still has a warped veneration for the man. And Mykelti Williamson plays the mute lawyer for the defence who had been violently double-crossed. These episodes, along with one centred on Monáe, reveal further evil dimensions to the father accurately  identified by the script as simply “the Monster”, while also being eccentric showcases for the actors, Young and Johnson included. Everybody is just a little bit hyperbolic as in the style of Greek tragedy, the world itself indirect and non-specific. The whole cast understood the assignment, but maybe no one more so than Brown, who eats up his scenes of chilling calm and cold sociopathy. I’ve never seen him play this kind of a role and it is clear he relishes it.
Yet his are not the most shocking bits of violence in the movie -an eerie spark of his fire is alive in his daughters, Racine especially, who is all too eager to dole out visceral punishment on even those connected with the heinous man. Her fury is righteous but its application is harrowing as she risks the repetition of a violent cycle and a darkening of her soul. These notions are centralized in Anaia’s disturbed reaction to the lengths her twin is willing to go and her own deep connection to her humanity. Neither she nor the movie suggests violence is never justified but the idea that it is a corrupting force regardless of intent is openly grappled with, especially once the story reaches its last act. The casualties feel more grim and horrifying than another revenge movie might frame them, a moral cost is illustrated; it's radical how Harris manages to have her cake and eat it.
One of the chief features of the movie that gives away perhaps its origins is the poetry of the dialogue. There is a particular eloquent cadence to it, mildly operatic, even as the subjects and diction are more grounded. It is a kind of deliberate chemistry that is rooted in theatre, and underground black theatre especially. The result is a movie that is beguiling to listen to. But otherwise Harris obscures the transition between mediums -there is very little staginess to her direction, which makes ample use of its spatial freedom in the editing and action. The action isn't anything stylistic or complex, but it is distinctly cinematic and effectively tense in places. More notable is the use of black and white in flashback sequences and a couple split-screen motifs. The former feels like a mere differentiation choice while the latter appears to aim at replicating some aspect of the original show -along with the telepathic conversations it come off here as rather arbitrary. The visual characterization of the father however is Harris's most successful artistic transfer -the close-ups on parts of his body without revealing the whole, or the creepy sustained shot of him from behind smoking in the house doorway while his burning wife and daughters scream in the background.
Ending on rather a sudden note leaving a few pieces unresolved, Is God Is leaves you a little befuddled. But the film is interesting and enjoyable, certainly distinct in its vibes and aesthetics -the twins are a couple of the most effectively styled movie characters in recent memory. Young and Johnson give exemplary performances -Young especially demonstrating the grit and range that has made her such a Broadway titan these last few years- and it's reason enough to see it, a sharper, more surprising revenge odyssey than we typically get in the movies.

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