Is God Is

Aleasha Harris has adapted her award-winning 2018 play Is God Is into a thriller film and it looks and sounds intense. Gritty, distorted bass guitar comes in with a low register riff at 0:03 and even though we see on screen a black and white shot of two young girls (Racine and Anaia) hugging on a park bench, the music foreshadows conflict.

As we cut to witnessing adult Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson) read a letter from their Mama, the music pauses at 0:10 to make space for the line, “She’s on her deathbed.” Hinting at the fire that becomes a key part of this film’s backstory, we have a close-up at 0:12 of a lighter sparking. The music re-enters on this shot, and added to the bass we now have a slowly detuning synthesizer note. Notice how at 0:15 a new bass rhythm seems to emerge out of the tempo of the stuttering car engine seen on screen.

As Racine and Anaia prepare to visit their mother (Vivica A. Fox), a steady bass rhythm is accompanied by a whispered vocal sample from the 2020 song “Wow (Look At Me)” by Chaii. The music pauses as their mother smokes a cigarette and exhales. All we hear is a high register synth tone in the background while we come in for the close up on their mother. The lyrics we just heard, “Look at me, look at me,” carry weight here as we are inclined to stare at her face, badly scarred and bandaged from intense burns in the house fire set by her ex-husband years earlier. The absence of music here invites us to lean in to hear the pivotal next line, which is featured on the film’s poster: “Make your daddy dead. Real dead.”

The ensuing montage shows us Racine and Anaia’s reaction to their mother’s command. A swift conversation later, they are on their way to find their father, and at 0:53 the chorus of Chaii’s song is back in, now at full volume, not whispered as before. We have some tasteful trailer triplets with dubstep-like synths at 1:00 for the Sergio Leone/Quentin Taratino-inspired intertitles introducing the two sisters officially (Racine is “The Rough One” and Anaia is “The Quiet One”).

At 1:04, musically this trailer becomes even more fun, as we build into YA YA from Beyoncé’s 2024 masterpiece album Cowboy Carter. The lyrics kick in at 1:14 as we cut to a high energy church service. The section from 1:16 to 1:53 of the trailer introduces us to the main characters one at a time, as the sisters get closer and closer to finding their father.

Beyoncé’s second verse features the lyrics “(wild)fire burned his house down”, and we hear that lyric at 1:54, timed exactly to the cut to a shot of a house ablaze. The lyric is edited so we hear “fire” instead of “wildfire,” a subtle tweak to make the song feel as if it were specifically written for this story. The trailer editors continue with effective little details, like the segue at 1:55 from a close-up of the father laughing maniacally to a shot of Anaia screaming, all in the context of the previous shot of the house fire.

A montage of violence continues as the trailer wraps up, with special mention for the graphic treatment of the word RAGE on screen glitching out with the music at 2:05. We presume to hear the sought-after father speaking at the obligatory turn phrase.

This trailer uses two fantastic pop songs whose lyrics fit with the plot and energy of the story. The detailed and clever audio/visual editing is engaging and fun, and the music gets exciting where it needs to, while also getting out of the way of the dialogue when it needs to. Can’t wait to see and hear this film!

Is God Is lights up theatres May 15, 2026.

— Jack Hui Litster