If You Should Leave Before Me (2025) Movie Review: What Is Grief, If Not Love Persevering?

Two people belonging to completely different worlds can collide when they least expect it. This collision can take heady, exhilarating shapes, allowing love and steady companionship to burst at the seams until you’re unsure where one begins and the other ends. Over time, this romantic bliss is peppered with the expected hardships of life: uneasy transitions, unpredictable changes, or little peccadillos gnawing at the time spent together. But where a deep mutual trust exists, even these hardships feel minuscule in the face of waking up next to your lover, or falling into a mundane lull of shared domesticity that gives life meaning one day at a time. 

Mark (Shane P. Allen) and Joshua (John Wilcox) embody this sentiment in “If You Should Leave Before Me,” the latest debut feature by The Andersons (J. Markus Anderson & Boyd Anderson) that will knock the air out of your lungs with the sheer beauty and heartbreak it evokes. Mark wakes up to make some coffee, and this morning ritual is as deliberate and meticulous as it can get. He chooses a blend from neatly categorized packets of whole coffee beans, favoring precision over feeling to blend what he feels is the perfect cup. Joshua, on the other hand, is more instinctual, as he empties a freshly-brewed pot of coffee into the sink without thinking, and playfully remarks that what makes Mark’s coffee good isn’t precision, but love.

This isn’t just about coffee, of course, as our central couple sport distinct attitudes towards life and cling to different coping mechanisms in times of crisis. But after decades of being together, something devastating happens, changing the very fabric of their reality along with the purpose of our existence. 

Both Mark and Joshua must assist departed souls to the afterlife. The why and how isn’t important here, as “If You Should Leave Before Me” confidently operates on dream logic, which flits between absurdist humor to the most surreally hellish vignettes. Rarely has a film succeeded in stitching together disparate tones with such effective profundity, where moods shift and bleed into one another effortlessly. One moment, you’ll lament over a saga of lost love, and in the other, boisterous humor (and the recreation of a popular meme) will make you appreciate how well the levity flows into the somberness. There’s also a wealth of emotions constantly shared between Mark and Joshua, who cycle through tenderness, grief, frustration, and enduring attraction while navigating this rather peculiar circumstance. 

It is not difficult to gauge what’s happening to them — in fact, the film visually cues us in with artful shots that speak volumes even before anyone starts speaking onscreen. We are meant to let these beautiful and uncomfortable feelings wash over us, especially when Mark and Joshua go door to door to help those who need a push to move on. Every character leaves a mark, bringing in incredible variety to the emotional fabric of the story, which ultimately loops back to what Mark and Joshua share. 

There’s a sense of helpless resignation that Mark feels from time to time, but he will do anything to keep his Joshua by his side, no matter how desperate things might get. The concepts of letting go or moving on feel oddly foreign to someone who hasn’t stared grief square in the eye after all, and there is such a thing as loving someone to the point of craving their presence like air. 

Words fail to convey how pitch-perfect Allen and Wilcox are in “If You Should Leave Before Me,” as if they were destined to play Mark and Joshua, and every little nuance that fleshes them out into complex characters. While every performance is brilliant across the board, the two actors enliven the screen with remarkable depth, switching in and out of the emotions that make or break our existence. The way they’re framed together constantly informs their personalities, where every technical detail works in tandem with their respective journeys, prompting our own introspections about loss and love. Sincerity is the lifeblood of this story — even in the most juvenile and outlandish moments, you can feel the soulful core of this creative endeavor that must’ve stemmed from an unblemished urge to create something special. 

A love so gentle yet intense can be overwhelming, which is why “If You Should Leave Before Me” also has moments where grief lingers, mixed in with bittersweetness. The cumulative experience is singular and moving, impressive and authentic on every front imaginable. What more can a lover of cinema ask for? 

Read More: The Many Faces Of Mortality: 15 Great Movies About Death

If You Should Leave Before Me (2025) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Letterboxd
If You Should Leave Before Me (2025) Movie Cast: Shane P. Allen, John Wilcox, Tom Noga, Merrick McCartha, Susan Louise O’Connor, LeeAnne Bauer, Vu Mai