Influences weigh heavily on If I Go Will They Miss Me, an exceedingly tender family drama set in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Not only is that a similar backdrop to Charles Burnett’s great 1978 film Killer of Sheep, Will They Miss Me opens to a Jon Batiste cover of “This Bitter Earth,” which played a crucial part in Burnett’s film. From there, Will They Miss Me includes multiple sequences of surfside communion, a la Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, and even offers up a double-dolly shot, one of Spike Lee’s signature techniques. Thankfully, amidst all the nodding to filmmakers who have come before, writer-director Walter Thompson-Hernández finds his own delicate voice, one that matches the soft face and eyes of Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell), a middle-schooler who worships his troubled father (J. Alphonse Nicholson) but gets little in return. Employing light touches of magical realism (obsessed with Greek mythology, Lil Ant has visions of his dad as an ancient god), Thompson-Hernández creates a permeable world, in which unspoken fears and dreams seep into the mundanity of everyday life. If I Go Will They Miss Me is based on a short film, and you can feel it struggling to arrange its striking ideas and evocative imagery into a sustained narrative, yet there is no doubt that a natural cinematic talent is at work. Beyond that, the movie is anchored by a luminous performance from Danielle Brooks (Sofia in 2023’s The Color Purple) as Big Ant’s husband and Lil Ant’s mom. Resolute and rooted in the demands of the everyday, she keeps the movie from ever floating off into whimsy.
(9/25/2026)
