'Is God Is' Trailer: Vivica A. Fox Is A Vengeful God In Bold And Thrilling First Look At Star-Studded Film
Aleshea Harris makes her feature directorial debut with one of the most electric casts assembled this year — and the trailer just set the internet on fire.
When a trailer drops and the comment sections immediately erupt with "I'm buying tickets NOW," you know something special is on the horizon. That's exactly what happened this week when Orion Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios unleashed the first look at Is God Is — and if this two-minute preview is any indication, May 15 cannot come fast enough.
Based on Aleshea Harris' award-winning 2018 play, Is God Is follows twin sisters Racine and Anaia — introduced in the trailer's stylized title cards as "the Rough One" and "the Quiet One" — bound by disfiguring burn scars and a shared trauma they cannot outrun. Their dying mother delivers one final command from her hospital bed: find the monstrous father who destroyed their family and make him pay. What follows, according to the official synopsis, is "a bold, stylish thriller that weaves biting humor into sinister suspense, where sisterly devotion becomes a deadly weapon and justice demands blood."
And that mother? She's played by Vivica A. Fox — and she is operating at full deity-level in this trailer. Fox commands every second of her screen time as a woman who is bedridden, burned, and still utterly terrifying. She doesn't need to move to own the room. When she speaks, you believe her daughters would walk through fire — again — to do what she asks.
Kara Young and Mallori Johnson anchor the film as the twin sisters, and from what the trailer shows, they are absolutely up to the task. The chemistry, the physicality, the barely contained rage — this is a duo worth watching. Supporting them is a cast that reads like a wishlist: Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, Josiah Cross, and Sterling K. Brown, who brings his signature intensity to what appears to be the monstrous father the sisters are hunting.
What makes this more than just another revenge thriller is who's behind the camera. Harris — writing and directing her feature debut — describes the film's world as "three clicks to the left of center." That grindhouse-meets-mythology aesthetic jumps off the screen. This isn't a clean, polished Hollywood revenge story. It's rawer, stranger, and far more mythic than that. Think Greek tragedy filtered through a Black feminist lens with the volume cranked all the way up.
The producing muscle behind the project is equally formidable. Tessa Thompson, Janicza Bravo, Riva Marker, and Harris herself serve as producers — a collective of women who understand exactly what kind of story this is and why it needs to be told without compromise. The film was originally set up at A24 back in 2018 before landing at Amazon MGM's Orion Pictures, and the wait appears to have been worth every year.
Harris has said she wants audiences to walk away understanding that this is a story about Black women and girls — their pain, their power, and their right to demand justice on their own terms. The trailer makes that intention unmistakably clear.
Is God Is opens exclusively in theaters May 15, 2026. Mark it.