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If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a psychological thriller about the average life of a relatively average woman burdened by the weight of existence. Uncomfortable and paranoid, Mary Bronstein’s sophomore film is a relatable anxiety dream about motherhood and womanhood.
The film follows Montauk therapist, Linda (Rose Byrne), after the ceiling of her home caves in. She is forced to live in a nearby motel with her sick daughter while her landlord stalls on fixing her ceiling, and her husband is away on a work trip, having a significantly better time.
The film is not strictly a horror but is crafted like one. Linda’s daughter (who doesn’t have a credited name) is seen but never heard. Her constant worries, demands, and screams are uttered off-screen, so the audience only sees Linda’s tense smile. The illness is vague enough to be unsettling, and whether Linda is unaware of her daughter’s diagnosis or if she is burying her head in the sand is unclear. Bronstein purposely makes filmmaking decisions to throw audiences into an unsettling state of disorientation.
Linda’s husband only appears in the film’s closing scenes; otherwise a disembodied voice without a face. Hearing these people yet never seeing them is a strangely disconcerting feeling for the audience. This is one of the many horror film tricks If I Had Legs I’d Kick You uses to mirror Linda’s unravelling mental health. You don’t simply see her life unravel; you feel every heart palpitation alongside Linda.
As Linda has to balance her daughter’s health and her housing situation, all while her husband Charlie (Christian Slater) seems unaware of what could be causing her to be so stressed. He patronizingly tells her to just sort it all out, like it could all be fixed in an afternoon. It won’t be an unfamiliar anxiety to women, especially mothers, who are forever burdened but expected to face it with a smile.
Linda and Charlie’s daughter has to attend a specialist clinic every day as she can’t eat without a feeding tube. Dr Spring (played by the director Mary Bronstein) warns her that her daughter will need to gain a significant amount of weight to get off the IV and keep getting the treatment. Linda sees this diagnosis as a ticking clock over her head, feeding into her already existing guilt. None of the meetings and groups helps; in fact, they just make Linda feel even more like a bad mother. While extreme, it’s a situation many people with children, especially women, will connect with.
Moved out of their home by the landlord when repairs are underway, Linda and her daughter end up living in a low-rent motel. Here, Linda spends her evenings arguing with surly receptionist Diana (Ivy Wolk) and being charmed by resident superintendent James (a charming A$AP Rocky). Her time with James, spent drinking and taking drugs, is the closest we see to the real Linda, the woman she was before children, husbands, and patients.
On top of her personal problems, Linda’s work life is not much easier. Her workplace friendship with her unnamed colleague (Conan O’Brien in his feature acting debut) has become hostile and uncomfortable. Her patients aren’t doing much better, especially with their therapist so caught up in her own issues. Linda notices one of her patients, Caroline (Danielle MacDonald), is becoming increasingly paranoid and parasocial, and starts to see echoes of her own behaviour in the troubled new mother and her dismissive husband.
Rose Byrne gives the performance of a lifetime as the woman on the edge. DP Christopher Messina claustrophobically zooms in on Byrne’s face as the rest of the world goes blurry around her. The actor has nowhere to hide in the film; her face is always the focus of the scene. The power in this movie comes from her reactions to often unseen people and moments, leaving no crutch for the actor to hide behind. It’s a performance that many would have overplayed, but the Australian star gives a nuanced, lived-in portrayal of a woman on the edge.
It’s almost impossible not to sympathize with Linda, who is made to feel guilty at her parenting style but pretty much everyone in her life. Despite making some less-than-ideal choices throughout the film, she is always a sympathetic human who deserves more than the world gives her. The way Linda is written speaks to human nature, mothers or not, life is overwhelming, and it’s easy to quickly become out of your depth.
The gaping hole in the ceiling of Linda’s home is a good metaphor for her life, slowly crumbling until it gives in to the pressure and collapses. Mary Brownstein delivers an unflinching portrayal of the guilt of motherhood, saying the quiet bit out loud. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You isn’t a palatable film for everyone. It’s more uninhibited than women in American cinema are commonly allowed.
As Linda’s mental health unravels, the film becomes more experimental, mimicking her own loss of the grasp of reality. Reality and fiction begin to blur until the audience starts questioning if certain people and scenarios were ever really there. The final act may lose some viewers, relying more on metaphors and symbolism than on storytelling. The takeaway viewers will have from the ambiguous final act will depend on the lens through which they have watched the film. Nothing is neatly tied up in a bow, which gives Linda’s story even more of a kick. Whether it works for you or not, you’ll walk away thinking about it.
It’s not easy to take in almost two hours of someone else’s anxiety, and the film does demand a lot from the viewer. Compared by many to Uncut Gems, this film is unsettling from start to end with no break for lightness. Unlike the Safdie Brothers’ masterpiece, in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, there are no villains, just people dealing with life the best way they can. The fact that these all feel like real people is even more terrifying, ultimately.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an uncomfortably real depiction of the terror of keeping a child alive while also cocooning your own mental health, all while dealing with a world that wants to pull you under. Motherhood is not a sacrifice in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, it is cosmic horror. Brownstein uses tropes and tricks associated with the horror genre to help audiences enter Linda’s world, where being a mother is a physical, emotional, and spiritual burden.
Rating: A
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If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
With her life crashing down around her, Linda attempts to navigate her child's mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.
Release Date: October 10, 2025
Director: Mary Bronstein
Cast: Rose Byrne , Conan O'Brien , A$AP Rocky
