This movie is really deep and you will not catch how deep it really is until you leave the theater. The trailer will have you believe that this film is about revenge and domestic violence. Is this movie about that? Sure. There are elements of that, but the core of the film rests in self-worth and walking in your power. Let me explain…
I did not know that Is God Is was a play before a movie, but I did get adaptation vibes when I was watching it. It felt very much like it was based on a book. Finding out it was based on a play written by the same person who adapted it to screen and directed it is the same difference.
With that being said, when the film started, the twin thing was very irritating. And I don’t mean the nickname “twin.” I mean the brushing the teeth together, using the bathroom together, speaking together, etc. It’s not until you get to the middle of the movie where it starts to disappear because the girls are in descension. What didn’t irritate me was the silent conversation they had between them. I think that was very clever and something I know you cannot do in the theater like you can do in film. The actresses did a great job acting what was unspoken and the words on the screen, obviously, guided you through the conversation.
Here’s what’s a little hairy for me. They gave you three women, and one man, who all had varied experiences with their dad. We didn’t get much from Divine but desperation and longing. It was odd that the son wanted to stop the girls from finding a man he also never knew and left his momma. I thought when they met Angie they would get a moment where she would, for lack of a better term, bond with the girls from shared trauma. Yes, she has a nice house and seems to live a nice life, but when they met her, she was fleeing this man. I didn’t understand her choice to call the girls and their mom names and then spit on Racine. She knew the trauma they had been through. She was living in that hell.
We spent so much time on the girls’ relationship to one another and this journey to find their dad to carry out this mission “God,” their mother, sent them on that we didn’t get enough from everyone. I know the movie is about Anaia and Racine (Anaia more so), but I wanted more. It felt lacking in things that I really think would have fleshed out this story and made it less of a good girls vs bad guy story. For example, I am no longer in the business of watching a movie that has a pure villain with no rhyme or reason to his or her villainy. Their father was just a terrible man…and that’s all we got. I dare say that the movie made me feel like they were trying to give you a little of why their father was the way he was through Racine. The way she let this mission to kill her father consume her until she no longer resembled the person her sister knew. I could have also wanted that conclusion to be drawn because I was looking for something to explain his behavior.
I really enjoyed that the two most important things you were to remember in this movie stood out and paid off in the end. When their mom tells them that he has a sweet side because men like him always have a sweet side, we get to see that when Anaia finally meets him and when she has her interaction with her brother. And when they meet Chuck and he tells them to be “careful with vengeance [because] you never know where the blood will land.” THAT pay off was brilliant. Was it sad, yes, but we can’t always have a happen ending.
Something else I really loved that this film adaption did so well was way they crafted those shots around their father. We all know their father is played by Sterling K. Brown (and you will not make me hate that man!) and we all know what he looks like,. But this movie would shoot his feet or the back of his head. I LOVED the shot in the flashback with him and their mom. These shots paired with the intensity of the sound of the match catching fire, the sound of him blowing the smoke from his cigarette, him humming gave off a sinister vibe. You knew, not from people telling you, but from this combination that something was not right with this man.
I don’t want to give away the ending BUT I will say, again, I understood the beginning better when the movie ended. Everything with the girls in the beginning was very annoying. Borderline overkill with the twin thing, but in the end, you understand why they went so hard to establish this codependency between the girls. Of course, after the fire, they are all they have.
One last time that annoyed me. There was a not of bathroom time with these women that we met. Have no idea why, but it was a choice. What annoyed me the most was that no one wiped. Like….no one. It was strange to me, and I thought about it the entire film.
I kind of want to watch this again to see what else I get from it. I wonder if get was something else that I should have been paying attention to. Definitely a watch twice type of movie.
