Twin sisters hunt down a wayward dad in the inspired 'Is God Is'

Playwright Aleshea Harris makes a bold cinematic debut with the surface adaptation of her Obie Award-winning play “Is God Is,” a harrowing and beauteous portion of surrealist neo-noir. Her fable depicts duplicate sisters connected a revenge roadworthy trip, seeking to close the wrongs of their aboriginal puerility astatine the behest of their estranged parent and find immoderate catharsis on the way.

Tony Award-winning histrion Kara Young co-stars arsenic Racine, the mouthy, rough-and-tough twin. Mallori Johnson plays her sister Anaia: shy, retreating and “emotional,” a descriptor that lands similar an insult connected her psyche. Harris introduces america to the girls successful a sepia flashback, their tiny bodies clad successful matching dresses, 1 caput resting connected the other’s shoulder. They lone person each other.

When we drawback up with them successful the contiguous day, the twins unrecorded a beingness perfectly successful sync, their movements successful rhythm, their telepathic connection expressed on-screen successful typewriter-font subtitles. Harris besides shows america the pain scars that ripple up Racine’s limb and crossed Anaia’s face, textured tegument that makes strangers blanch, to which Racine lashes retired defensively. They unrecorded successful a silo for two, sharing their pain, icing their scars. They’re psychically connected, adjacent if they are 2 antithetic sides of the aforesaid coin, Racine angry, Anaia scared.

But the twins are floored and delighted to person a missive from their long-lost mother, Ruby (Vivica A. Fox), who is ailing and covered successful burns from the aforesaid onslaught that scarred their bodies. She describes for them the nighttime their begetter (Sterling K. Brown) doused her successful gasoline and lit a match, and dispatches her girls connected a bloody ngo to get revenge connected a antheral they’ve ne'er met.

Thus begins their quest down a blood-red roadworthy into their father’s bosom of darkness, which takes them from what seems to beryllium the Deep South to the Western desert. Everything successful this surface satellite is heightened, somewhat off-kilter but wholly plausible (with the objection being Ruby’s wretched body, inactive burning aft each these years). It’s filled with wacky characters and chaotic coincidences but the backdrop of maltreatment is each excessively real.

The girls travel a way of tears to Divine (Erika Alexander), a charismatic preacher inactive successful the carnal thrall of her clip with their father. Her code publication leads them to Chuck Hall (Mykelti Williamson), a cowboy lawyer who mislaid his lingua to him, but inactive has tons to accidental and warnings to give. And past they find their inverse reflector image: a brace of duplicate boys (Xavier Mills and Justen Ross) happily ensconced successful a lavish location with a pool, their fearful parent (Janelle Monáe) dripping successful luxury covering and jewelry but trying to marque a interruption from her gilded cage.

“Is God Is” isn’t the benignant of rollicking free-for-all that volition person you cheering successful the theater. Rather, it’s a classical noir successful that the full satellite Harris presents feels infected with unit and corruption, careening toward an inevitable, bleakly tragic ending.

But the travel determination is richly rendered done Harris’ poetic sensibility. It’s ever fascinating to spot however theatre talents accommodate to cinematic storytelling, and Harris has a keen oculus for striking visuals (captured by cinematographer Alexander Dynan) and a crisp consciousness of rhythm, expressed successful the edit by Jay Rabinowitz. The percussive people by Joseph Shirley and Moses Sumney underlines this and gives the full movie an eerie, funny atmosphere, lending to a consciousness of unreality.

But it’s Young who demands afloat attention. Her fiery, entrancing show blazes crossed the surface and is simply a breakout movie relation for the acclaimed signifier actor. While Johnson holds the affectional center, Young is riveting arsenic the duplicate who burns excessively agleam for this world, raging against the unit of evil that is her father, played by Brown successful a genuinely terrifying registry that we’ve ne'er seen from him before.

Equally enchanting and disturbing successful its unsocial blend of magical and societal realism, “Is God Is” is simply a highly stylish and daring announcement of a caller cinematic endowment successful Harris, who has been allowed to afloat explicit a imaginativeness that’s uncompromising and wholly hers. It’s uncommon that an creator is fixed specified state to make a singular work, rarer inactive to witnesser the commencement of a caller dependable ringing with specified clarity connected screen.

Katie Walsh is simply a Tribune News Service movie critic.