The kill list in “Is God Is” is a short one: a single name, and not even a name at that. The sole target of Aleshea Harris‘ incendiary revenge movie is credited only as “the Monster,” and really, he’s very much just a man. Men are the enemy here, but so are women, their children and anyone else standing between twin sisters Anaia (Mallori Johnson) and Racine (Kara Young) and their quarry: They long ago stopped seeing as human the estranged father who scarred them for life, inside and out, and so their belated mission to get him back takes on a mythically merciless dimension. Inhuman violence begets inhuman violence in “Is God Is,” a bloody, neck-snapping jolt of a film less concerned with moral justice than amoral catharsis.
Though it’s faithfully adapted from Harris’ celebrated 2018 Off Broadway play, “Is God Is” carries a stark cinematic sensibility through a rangy stew of reference points: Harris’ writing tips its hat to the loquacious pulp poetry of Quentin Tarantino and fellow playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh, but also the muscular structural minimalism of spaghetti westerns and the swaggering excesses of 1970s Blaxploitation film. Theatrically, it’s rooted in the unfettered narrative extremes of Greek tragedy; at a literary level, Harris’ vernacular can echo the rugged lyricism of Toni Morrison.
