SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Aleshea Harris is an acclaimed playwright. She was even shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize. But she had no film experience when she decided to write, produce and direct a movie version of her revenge play called "Is God Is." Critic Bob Mondello says it's an astonishing debut.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Twin sisters Racine and Anaia are inseparable.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Where Racine go Anaia always gonna follow.
MONDELLO: They'd been that way since they were disfigured in a childhood fire they barely remember. It left Anaia's face a latticework of scars that made her shy, left Racine less visible scars, but psychic pain that turned her fierce. Racine's their muscle, Anaia their soul - orphans, or so they thought.
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KARA YOUNG: (As Racine) We got a letter from mama.
MALLORI JOHNSON: (As Anaia) I thought she was dead. What she want with us now? Where she been at?
YOUNG: (As Racine) She's on her deathbed.
MONDELLO: They rush through a Deep South that feels like something out of Zora Neale Hurston - Southern Gothic, where passions run hot. On arrival, Racine says something unexpected.
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YOUNG: (As Racine) You ready to see God?
JOHNSON: (As Anaia) God?
YOUNG: (As Racine) She made us, didn't she?
MONDELLO: Mama lies in a bed, body scarred head to foot, calm, but determined.
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VIVICA A FOX: (As Ruby) Those are my girls.
MONDELLO: Their father, she tells them, set her on fire all those years ago. The girls were burned when they tried to save her while he stood at the door blowing smoke rings at the moon. Now she has a mission for them.
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FOX: (As Ruby) I'm gonna keep this real simple for you. Make your daddy dead. Kill the spirit, then the body like he did me.
YOUNG: (As Racine) This seem a little crazy.
FOX: (As Ruby) Not as crazy as setting your wife on fire in front of your kids then abandoning them.
MONDELLO: This is the stuff of genre flicks obviously - grind house spaghetti western - but it's also the stuff of Greek tragedy and the Old Testament. And writer-director Aleshea Harris, who hails from live theater, leans into that side of things - scripture and satire...
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ERIKA ALEXANDER: (As Divine) ...The devil.
MONDELLO: ...When the search for dad leads the twins to a minister he had a fling with...
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ALEXANDER: (As Divine) ...In this room. Hey.
YOUNG: (As Racine) Oh, hell no.
MONDELLO: ...Witness suppression straight out of Greek myth when they visit a mute lawyer their father reduced to scrawling notes.
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DUMMY REF KARA YOUNG AND MALLORI JOHNSON: (As Racine and Anaia) For fear that it would wag, he took my tongue.
MONDELLO: And when Racine starts swinging a rock in a sock like she's David going after Goliath, there's no question the filmmaker's invoking ancient stories of retribution.
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YOUNG: (As Racine) I don't want nothing but blood.
MONDELLO: Harris is also invoking real life domestic violence and the bonds of sisterhood in a tale of young Black women who are the heroes of their own story. Mallori Johnson's Anaia and Kara Young's Racine are so in sync...
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YOUNG: (As Racine) If I'm dumb, you dumb.
JOHNSON: (As Anaia) If I'm weak, you weak.
YOUNG: (As Racine) Ooh.
JOHNSON: (As Anaia) Ooh.
MONDELLO: ...It's easy to believe each twin knows what her sister is thinking. For us, their unspoken thoughts helpfully appear as pop-ups. And they're surrounded by considerable star power - Vivica A. Fox, Janelle Monae and as Dad, initially filmed in ways that obscure his face as if he's too toxic to look in the eye, Sterling K. Brown playing a sadist and manipulator who proves as surprising as he is monstrous.
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STERLING K BROWN: (As The Monster) Why don't you sit with me. Seems like we got a lot to talk about.
MONDELLO: I suspect I'm making "Is God Is" sound heady and intellectual. And it is that. But Harris also makes it cinematic and exhilarating in ways you don't expect from a first-time director. Quentin Tarantino may have seemed this accomplished right out of the gate and in much the same way, but there aren't a lot of other parallels. The violence blisters. The rage consumes. The writing combines modernity and myth.
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JOHNSON: (As Anaia) We ain't killers.
YOUNG: (As Racine) We come from a man who tried to kill our mama and a mama who wants to kill that man. It's in the blood.
MONDELLO: It's customary to say you can't wait to see what a first-timer does next, and I suppose I do feel that way about Aleshea Harris. But right now, I just want to see "Is God Is" again.
I'm Bob Mondello. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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