In mainstream cinema, Black women are rarely allowed to just be angry. We are granted the space to grieve, to love, to show vulnerability, and to serve as the joyful, resilient backbones of everyone else’s stories.
But raw, unadulterated rage?
That is a luxury historically denied to us. When we express anger, it is systematically flattened into a stereotype. We become the “Angry Black Woman,” a caricature designed to dismiss our pain rather than examine it.
But writer-director Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is is changing that mindset. Adapted from her acclaimed stage play, the film doesn’t ask Black women to shrink, explain, or apologize for their anger. Instead, it places that rage at the center of the story and treats it as both justified and transformative. In doing so, it has become a necessary pilgrimage for Black women looking for something cinema has long denied them: Architects of their own justice.
The premise is as cinematic as it is primal: Twin sisters (played with extreme intensity by Mallori Johnson and Kara Young) embark on a surreal journey of vengeance after being tasked with confronting the father who devastated their family. It features a powerhouse ensemble, including Erika Alexander, Vivica A. Fox, Sterling K. Brown, and Janelle Monáe, with Tessa Thompson driving the vision forward as a producer.
Watching Sterling K. Brown step away from the kind, reassuring characters he’s known for and embrace a chilling villain role is one of the film’s biggest surprises. He brings real menace to the screen. But as good as Brown is, this story belongs to the women. They are the heart of the film, delivering performances impossible to forget.
They steal the film because they are doing something we seldom see Black women do on screen. As Erika Alexander brilliantly noted on the red carpet, her character, Divine, represents a woman trapped between healing and heartbreak, capturing the tragic reality that “a lot of women, when they get hurt, they don’t move on. They get stuck.” Is God Is refuses to let Black women stay stuck in their victimhood. Instead, it lets them move through it with a hammer in hand.
This is exactly why Black women are tuning in to this movie (which just hit streaming apps). It isn’t just about watching a highly stylized, wildly entertaining “one-of-one” piece of filmmaking, as Tessa Thompson described it. It’s about the collective sigh of relief that happens when the women on screen refuse to take the high road. Janelle Monáe recalled being completely blown away by a script that made her laugh and cry simultaneously, while Vivica A. Fox summed up the visceral thrill of the film with a grin: “Girl power. Yeah. But revenge, a dish best served cold.”
For generations, Black women have been asked to digest their trauma, to heal quietly, and to transform their scars into community lessons. Is God Is offers a radical alternative. As Mallori Johnson beautifully put it, the film gives Black women “an opportunity to hopefully have some release and some catharsis.”
We are flocking to this movie because it reflects something many Black women know all too well: the pressure to swallow our anger and keep moving. While the film’s revenge fantasy is extreme, the emotions behind it are not. There is something cathartic about seeing a Black woman who refuses to suffer in silence. The film reminds us that our anger is not a weakness. It is often the natural response to being hurt, dismissed, or overlooked. Harris has done more than make a compelling film. She has created a space where Black women can see themselves, their pain, and their power reflected back at them.
