‘Is God Is’ Is the Horror Movie We Need Right Now
By Dread Central
5 min readDirected by Aleshea Harris, ‘Is God Is’ comes out on May 15, 2026 and follows twin sisters hellbent on revenge. Here’s everything we know.
Directed by Aleshea Harris, ‘Is God Is’ comes out on May 15, 2026 and follows twin sisters hellbent on revenge. Here’s everything we know.
Erika Alexander of Living Single, who made a cameo in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, and Mykelti Williamson, who had a role in The Purge: Election Year, round out the cast. Is God Is hits U.S. theaters on May 15, 2026.
As a play, Is God Is premiered in 2018 in New York City, Off-Broadway, at the Soho Repertory Theatre. It won three Obie Awards, the prestigious Off-Broadway Theater Awards given since 1955. As early as 2018, A24, along with Scott Rudin, was looking to adapt Harris’ play; this producing team was behind indie coming-of-age flicks Lady Bird, Eighth Grade, and Mid-90s.
Instead, under Amazon MGM Orion Pictures, Tessa Thompson’s Viva Maude took over production. The film version of Is God Is started filming in 2024. Thompson’s Viva Maude is responsible for the crime drama His & Hers, which has reigned supreme on Netflix this year. Viva Maude also produced Hedda, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play, helmed by Candyman and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple director Nia DaCosta.
Is God Is is coming at the perfect time. Not only does there appear to be a Southern Gothic revival, with Sinners sweeping award season and the “Ethel Cain aesthetic” piquing the interest of chronically online, vintage-loving, rural goth girls. But there’s also a renaissance happening for Black women in horror as well.
The foundation was laid with actresses like Jada Pinkett Smith in Scream 2, which Scary Movie iconically spoofed with Regina Hall (who’s returning for Scary Movie 6). Another part of this foundation was Brandy in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.
Decades later, actresses like Lupita Nyong’o in Jordan Peele’s Us took up the mantle. Since then, there’s been a steady trickle of Black final girls. Think of the way Naomi Ackie shone in Zoë Kravitz’s Blink Twice and how Ayo Edibiri lent her quiet snark to last year’s Opus. I’m excited to see how Harris’ film adds to the Black-women-in-horror film canon.
And while we’re only one trailer deep, Is God Is looks like the horror movie we need right now. Long before Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Southern Gothic has been a formidable subgenre in horror. I think of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, whose atmospheric tales feel as gross and swampy and haunting as the cities he frequented, such as Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia. I also think of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” a tale of decay that inspired My Chemical Romance.
And of course, there’s Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire media universe. Beyond that, Eve’s Bayou, directed by Kasi Lemmons of Candyman fame, and Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Coven showcase the macabre beauty and madness that is pervasive in the South. Even without the occult, there’s something about the South that is ghastly and ghostly —and I can’t wait to see how this looks in Harris’ Is God Is.
