Is God Is stands out in a year of indie horror hits
Is God Is SHOULD have been this year’s Sinners. Despite being released in the same window that gave us Obsession, Backrooms, Hokum, Passenger and several other heavily hyped and acclaimed indie horror films, however, Is God Is underperformed at the box office and was largely ignored by online fans. The critics seemed to love the film, but with just $5 million in theatrical grosses against a roughly $15 million budget, Is God Is flopped and it flopped hard.
Now that the film is available on VOD maybe it will find its rightful audience. I’m just one opinion, of course, but in my book Is God Is is definitely the BEST horror film to get a wide-scale theatrical release so far in 2026. It’s funny, it’s brutal, it’s violent, it’s poignant and it’s totally unpredictable. Don’t let the marketing material (which positioned the film as a slight retread of Kill Bill) fool you — scene for scene, moment for moment, this very well could be the scariest movie we’ve gotten all year long.
In a year where filmmakers like Curry Barker, Kane Parsons and Markiplier have been propped up as genre wunderkinds, you kinda have to wonder why Is God Is director Aleshea Harris wasn’t given the same recognition and praise from the online horror community. For a first time filmmaker her work in this movie is nothing short of extraordinary — it’s innovative, it’s technologically impressive and it weaves a unique narrative that doesn’t rely on sheer aesthetics and “aura” alone to creep you the hell out. Even when Harris gives us the old cat-and-mouse, stock slasher staple chase sequence she manages to convey it differently from what we’d expect. In a year where seemingly every ex-YouTuber turned A24 director has been hailed as a visionary, I think Harris is the only debuting director who has shown a style, form and approach that truly deserves the distinction.
And Harris is the beating heart of this picture in more ways than just one. She adapted the film from her own off-Broadway play and she brings a true authorial vision to the movie. She knows these characters inside and out, their motivations, what they fear, what they want to hide from. Every character in the film has a sense of vulnerability and a spark of madness. It’s just a matter of when that madness explodes and who it explodes against.
The film is anchored around the performances of Kara Young and Mallori Johnson, who play twin sisters Racine and Anaia, respectively. Both characters were horrifically scarred when they were children when their abusive father tried to murder their mother by setting her on fire in a bathtub. The twins try to live a “normal” life the best they can, until one day they receive a dispatch that their mother survived the attempted murder and wants to see them one more time before she dies. The mother (played by Vivica A. Fox, who is completely unrecognizable underneath some of the most ghoulishly impressive makeup I’ve seen at the movies in ages) gives her daughters one final request before she departs to the sweet hereafter; she wants them to find their father and she wants them to make him pay dearly for what he’s done.
From there Is God Is turns into a morbid road trip picture, with our protagonists venturing into the Deep South to unearth clues as to their father’s whereabouts. They run into self-appointed prophetesses, attorneys who had their tongues cut off and a pair of male twins who have their own self-serving reasons for thwarting Racine and Anaia’s plans. The question, of course, is whether or not the duo ever find their father … and what’s going to happen when they finally do.
The grand finale of Is God Is is so good that I’m hesitant to say ANYTHING about it. But at the same time, I would like to call to your attention the fantastic performance by Sterling K. Brown as the central villain of the film. There’s this coldness and dispassion to the character that’s the exact opposite demeanor you’d expect from the role, and it makes everything he does so much more terrifying. There’s no scenery chewing in this film, even when the characters themselves are so over-the-top. It feels surreal yet never unrealistic. It’s mesmerizing, macabre stuff and off the top of my head, I don’t think there’s an obvious one-to-one comparison point for it — Is God Is might be a 1970s drive-in circuit exploitation revenge thriller in spirt, but in execution it’s a wonderfully unique genre-bender that always keeps you on your toes and never affords you a second to relax and let your guard down as a viewer.
I think the big mistake the Orion Pictures made was NOT marketing Is God Is as a “straight” horror picture. You can church it up with euphemisms like “Southern Gothic Thriller” and “Afropunk Revenge Comedy” all you want — and trust me, the people on Letterboxd love doing that — but Is God Is is unmistakably a horror movie at its core. It’s about a murderous father, people getting their faces bashed in with sacks of rocks, jugular slicings and all sorts of things you probably shouldn’t do with a pair of hedge trimmers in real life. I can easily see this film becoming a way late to the party cult classic a’la Frailty some day. Once people actually find this movie, they’re going to love it and wonder why they skipped out on it in the first place.
Is God Is is a film with several excellent performances, a fantastic soundtrack, a surprisingly high gore quotient and some downright fantastic practical makeup effects (which is something you’re seeing less off every year at the multiplex.) But what makes Is God Is one of the year’s best movies — and again, I’m not just relegating that to just horror films — is its storytelling. Harris brings us original characters who are multidimensional, whose actions always make some kind of sense even if we immediately pinpoint them as grave mistakes. The dialogue is memorable and even things as basic as the transitions between scenes feels fresh and novel here. There’s a somber yet slightly ethereal tone to the entire movie; its nightmarish, but a totally different kind of nightmarish than we’re sued to seeing at the local cineplex.
I truly hope the dismal box office take of Is God Is doesn’t prevent Harris from making any more big-budget, big-name studio productions. Out of all of the much-ballyhooed debut filmmakers making waves in 2026, I think Harris is far and away the most talented, the most creative and the most attuned as narrative story teller. She already has an idiosyncratic, inimitable style a’la Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, and I can only imagine what she could do with some of these beloved yet wayward dormant horror properties out there.
It’s more than a bit ironic (if not utterly tragic) that Is God Is fell through the cracks. Horror fans have been patting themselves on the back for years about inclusivity and diversity in the genre, yet when a Black woman comes along and makes a genuinely outstanding, original horror film like Is God Is it’s completely abandoned by the internet hordes, who preferred to cast all their attention towards a troupe of YouTuber white boys instead.
All I can say is that missing out on Is God Is is a horrible mistake … for a LOT of different reasons.
Director: Aleshea Harris
Writer: Aleshea Harris
Starring: Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Vivica A. Fox, Sterling K. Brown
Studio: Orion Pictures/Viva Maude/Linden Entertainment
Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios
Language: English
Runtime: 100 Minutes
Release Date: June 02, 2026 (VOD)
