If I Go Will They Miss Me Review: A Father-Son Drama

Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson) is a man running out of exits. Recently released from incarceration and navigating the fragile terrain of reentry, he's trying to reconnect with his young son, Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell), a boy whose imagination has become his primary coping mechanism. Lil Ant doesn't just play - he constructs entire worlds, populating them with a 2-Moon Friend (Kelvin Adekunle) who serves as both confidant and guide through the chaos of his home life.

Lozita (Danielle Brooks) anchors the domestic sphere with a weariness that never tips into caricature. She's the one holding the pieces together while Big Ant cycles through promises he can't always keep. Around them orbit figures like Jenn (Bre-Z), JJ (Myles Bullock), and Julia Rose (J.J. Boone) - each representing a different path, a different version of what survival looks like in their corner of the world.

The narrative resists tidy resolution. Thompson-Hernández isn't interested in whether Big Ant succeeds or fails in conventional terms. He's asking something more difficult: can love, even imperfect and inconsistent love, be enough to transform a relationship from something fragile into something healing? The film's answer is neither cynical nor naive. It's earned.

What strikes you first is the visual language. Thompson-Hernández, working with a cinematographer who clearly understands that intimacy requires space, frames his characters in ways that feel both observed and dreamlike. The film has the texture of a memory - specific yet slightly blurred at the edges, as if recalling it too precisely would break the spell.

J. Alphonse Nicholson delivers what might be the performance of his career. Big Ant could have been a collection of tropes - the absent father, the reformed man, the tragic figure - but Nicholson finds the contradictions. His silences are as expressive as his monologues. When he looks at his son, you see a man doing arithmetic in his head, calculating how many chances he has left.

Danielle Brooks matches him beat for beat. Lozita is not a martyr, not a saint, and not a villain. She's a woman who has learned that hope is a luxury she can't always afford, and Brooks plays that exhaustion with a precision that cuts.

The film's most daring choice is its embrace of Lil Ant's perspective. Bodhi Dell, in a remarkable child performance, makes the boy's fantasy world feel not like escapism but like survival. The 2-Moon Friend sequences - rendered with a low-fi, tactile aesthetic that recalls Julie Dash more than Marvel - are the film's emotional core. They're also its biggest risk, and for the most part, they pay off.

If there's a flaw, it's in the pacing. The middle act sags under the weight of its own contemplation. Characters repeat emotional beats that were already communicated. The film trusts silence, which is admirable, but occasionally mistakes stillness for depth. At 89 minutes, it still feels like it could lose ten.

Pros:

• J. Alphonse Nicholson's career-defining performance
• A visual style that prioritizes mood and memory over exposition
• Refreshingly non-stereotypical portrayal of Black fatherhood
• Bodhi Dell's child performance is a genuine revelation
• Danielle Brooks anchors every scene she's in

Cons:

• Middle act loses momentum
• Some fantasy sequences overstay their welcome
• A few supporting characters feel underdeveloped

If I Go Will They Miss Me is not a film that demands your attention - it earns it, quietly, scene by scene. Thompson-Hernández has made something that feels both timeless and urgently contemporary, a story about a Black father and son that refuses the easy narratives we've been trained to expect. It's flawed, occasionally frustrating, and ultimately unforgettable. In a landscape of franchise dominance, a film like this is a reminder that cinema can still be a vessel for grace.