Is God Is Lets Black Women Feel Their Rage — & The Catharsis That Comes With It
Welcome to “What’s Good,” a column where we break down what’s soothing, distracting, or just plain good in the streaming world with a “rooting for everybody Black” energy. This edition is all about Is God Is, starring Mallori Johnson and Kara Young, produced by Tessa Thompson and directed by Aleshea Harris (based on her play of the same name), in theaters now. I also spoke to the cast about the film below. What’s Good? Rage. Specifically, the kind of rage Black women are so rarely given permission to access publicly without punishment, unfair judgment, or the assumption that their anger isn’t a justified emotion but a designation of their entire race and gender. Typically, when we rage onscreen it’s flattened into a trope, not a feeling. Is God Is is GREAT because it takes the the blistering anger of its two leads and gives us a rich, layered story of vengeance that isn’t always an easy watch, but it is thrilling. Told with a surrealist, blood-soaked swagger, Is God Is follows twin sisters Racine and Anaia (played by an electric Kara Young and magnetic Mallori Johnson) as they embark on a revenge mission after reconnecting with the mother (Vivica A. Fox reminding us why she’s a legend) they believed was dead. Their father (played chillingly by Sterling K. Brown, unlike we’ve ever seen him) tried to burn all three of them alive when the twins were little. Racine and Anaia made it out with wounds to show for it (Anaia moreso) and lived the rest of their lives believing the mother succumbed to her injuries in the fire. The resurrection, and the fact that she made them, leads Racine and Anaia to refer to their mom as “God.” God is a Black woman, as she should be. And when she asks them on her death bed to murder their father, they set out to do just that. The setup does feel Biblical, and the film isn’t subtle about its critiques of the church and religion, but then it turns into a darkly funny Western road trip adventure — think vengeance by way of a dreamscape where trauma, destiny, and absurdity collide. But beneath all the stylized violence and hypnotic visuals is something surprisingly tender: a meditation on what liberation looks like when Black women stop suppressing what hurts. This movie is so much about having agency over oneself, taking agency over your own life, agency over your own rage, your own feeling of justice.mallori johnson Who It’s Good For (spoilers ahead): “I want to step on something for once. See what it feels like.” Racine says this to justify killing their father, and potentially his new family, so it’s not exactly relatable in the moment (even for those of us with daddy issues and intrusive thoughts!), but she’s also speaking to the reality of anyone who’s been othered or oppressed, and proverbially stepped on in their lives. Black women know this all too well. And that’s why when you’re watching the film as a Black woman, it’s an emotional experience. When I first talked to the cast (Erika Alexander and Kara Young) and the film’s visionary director Aleshea Harris on the red carpet of Essence Black Women In Hollywood, we all left the conversation in tears. And later, when I talked to Young and her co-star Johnson over Zoom from New York during the film’s press junket, the film’s stars know exactly what emotional nerve the story is hitting: “I want Black women to feel everything, whatever they want to feel,” Young told me. “[Ultimately], Anaia and Racine are fighting for justice for their ancestry, justice for the ancestors.” That’s the thing Is God Is understands deeply: rage doesn’t emerge in a vacuum. It’s inherited. It’s historical. It’s generational. The twins are avenging themselves, yes, but they’re also doing it for their mother, aka God, and carrying the grief of every Black woman taught to swallow pain politely and survive quietly. The movie refuses respectability politics entirely. Thank God. [Ultimately], Anaia and Racine are fighting for justice for their ancestry, justice for the ancestors.kara young When you’re watching Racine brutally murder her father’s current wife (a pitch-perfect Janelle Monae) and her half-brother, or Anaiia finally take revenge on their father after almost allowing herself to be charmed by him (casting Brown, noted family man and the nicest guy in Hollywood, in this role was brilliant and diabolical), you are rooting for violence — against your better judgement — and when you get it, it’s so satisfying. There’s a very specific kind of chaos that feels delicious to watch onscreen when Black women are allowed to be angry, messy, vindictive, grieving, hopeful, exhausted, and righteous all at once. They are strong. They are resilient. But they’re also just human. That’s the energy pulsing through Is God Is, the genre-bending fever dream turned cinematic revenge saga. And frankly, we need more movies willing to let Black women burn the whole thing down. This movie is for us, unequivocally. How Good Is It? While r
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Welcome to “What’s Good,” a column where we break down what’s soothing, distracting, or just plain good in the streaming world with a “rooting for everybody Black” energy. This edition is all about Is God Is, starring Mallori Johnson and Kara Young, produced by Tessa Thompson and directed by Aleshea Harris (based on her play of the same name), in theaters now. I also spoke to the cast about the film below.
What’s Good? Rage. Specifically, the kind of rage Black women are so rarely given permission to access publicly without punishment, unfair judgment, or the assumption that their anger isn’t a justified emotion but a designation of their entire race and gender. Typically, when we rage onscreen it’s flattened into a trope, not a feeling. Is God Is is GREAT because it takes the the blistering anger of its two leads and gives us a rich, layered story of vengeance that isn’t always an easy watch, but it is thrilling.
Told with a surrealist, blood-soaked swagger, Is God Is follows twin sisters Racine and Anaia (played by an electric Kara Young and magnetic Mallori Johnson) as they embark on a revenge mission after reconnecting with the mother (Vivica A. Fox reminding us why she’s a legend) they believed was dead. Their father (played chillingly by Sterling K. Brown, unlike we’ve ever seen him) tried to burn all three of them alive when the twins were little. Racine and Anaia made it out with wounds to show for it (Anaia moreso) and lived the rest of their lives believing the mother succumbed to her injuries in the fire. The resurrection, and the fact that she made them, leads Racine and Anaia to refer to their mom as “God.” God is a Black woman, as she should be. And when she asks them on her death bed to murder their father, they set out to do just that. The setup does feel Biblical, and the film isn’t subtle about its critiques of the church and religion, but then it turns into a darkly funny Western road trip adventure — think vengeance by way of a dreamscape where trauma, destiny, and absurdity collide. But beneath all the stylized violence and hypnotic visuals is something surprisingly tender: a meditation on what liberation looks like when Black women stop suppressing what hurts.
This movie is so much about having agency over oneself, taking agency over your own life, agency over your own rage, your own feeling of justice.
mallori johnson
Who It’s Good For (spoilers ahead): “I want to step on something for once. See what it feels like.” Racine says this to justify killing their father, and potentially his new family, so it’s not exactly relatable in the moment (even for those of us with daddy issues and intrusive thoughts!), but she’s also speaking to the reality of anyone who’s been othered or oppressed, and proverbially stepped on in their lives. Black women know this all too well. And that’s why when you’re watching the film as a Black woman, it’s an emotional experience. When I first talked to the cast (Erika Alexander and Kara Young) and the film’s visionary director Aleshea Harris on the red carpet of Essence Black Women In Hollywood, we all left the conversation in tears.
And later, when I talked to Young and her co-star Johnson over Zoom from New York during the film’s press junket, the film’s stars know exactly what emotional nerve the story is hitting: “I want Black women to feel everything, whatever they want to feel,” Young told me. “[Ultimately], Anaia and Racine are fighting for justice for their ancestry, justice for the ancestors.”
That’s the thing Is God Is understands deeply: rage doesn’t emerge in a vacuum. It’s inherited. It’s historical. It’s generational. The twins are avenging themselves, yes, but they’re also doing it for their mother, aka God, and carrying the grief of every Black woman taught to swallow pain politely and survive quietly. The movie refuses respectability politics entirely. Thank God.
[Ultimately], Anaia and Racine are fighting for justice for their ancestry, justice for the ancestors.
kara young
When you’re watching Racine brutally murder her father’s current wife (a pitch-perfect Janelle Monae) and her half-brother, or Anaiia finally take revenge on their father after almost allowing herself to be charmed by him (casting Brown, noted family man and the nicest guy in Hollywood, in this role was brilliant and diabolical), you are rooting for violence — against your better judgement — and when you get it, it’s so satisfying.
There’s a very specific kind of chaos that feels delicious to watch onscreen when Black women are allowed to be angry, messy, vindictive, grieving, hopeful, exhausted, and righteous all at once. They are strong. They are resilient. But they’re also just human. That’s the energy pulsing through Is God Is, the genre-bending fever dream turned cinematic revenge saga. And frankly, we need more movies willing to let Black women burn the whole thing down. This movie is for us, unequivocally.
How Good Is It? While revenge stories often flatten women into symbols — the grieving victim, the hardened antihero, the cool girl with a weapon — Is God Is lets its women be contradictory. They can be vulnerable and brutal, funny and terrifying, insecure and completely certain. The film doesn’t ask us to approve of every match they light. It simply asks us to understand why the fire exists in the first place. That emotional release is exactly what Mallori Johnson hopes Black women audiences take with them after the credits roll.
“I hope they can walk out of the theater with some sort of sense of release, catharsis,” she said. “This movie is so much about having agency over oneself, taking agency over your own life, agency over your own rage, your own feeling of justice, and sense of justice in your life so I hope that they are able to take that and have agency in their life or release whatever is in the way of them having their own agency.”
Catharsis is the perfect word for what Is God Is delivers. It’s the word I keep coming back to. Is God Is doesn’t deliver comfort, or healing packaged neatly with a bow. It’s catharsis. It’s release. It’s an exhale of a breath you didn’t even realize you were holding. This is a story about personal revenge, but it’s also about two girls trying to take back what the world has taken from them – by all means, even violently. The movie understands that sometimes survival isn’t pretty or inspirational. Sometimes it’s ugly crying, screaming, fantasizing about revenge, and trying to reclaim ownership over a life that’s been shaped by violence and oppression, things you had no control over. There’s power in watching Black women onscreen choose themselves, even when the choices are wild.
In a cultural moment where Black women are constantly expected to save democracy, save workplaces, save families, save everybody but themselves, watching a film that prioritizes their fury instead of their endurance feels radical. Is God Is isn’t interested in making its heroines palatable. It’s interested in making them free.
What Else Is Good?
• Being engaged multiple times is totally good and actually chic now.
• Off Campus! Especially its surprisingly sensitive approach to talking about sexual assault.
• This piece from my colleague Elizabeth Whitehead on the outrage over Olivia Rodrigo’s babydoll dress.
• Ranting about capitalism!!!
Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
Hedda: Tessa Thompson At Her Messiest & Very Best
