Some films wash over you gently; others pin you to your seat and refuse to let go until the credits roll. Mary Bronstein's "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" belongs firmly in the latter category—a relentless, anxiety-inducing Thriller masquerading as a maternal Drama that's also somehow one of the year's most darkly funny films. Rose Byrne delivers a career-defining performance as Linda, a Montauk therapist and mother whose life systematically collapses over the course of what feels like an extended panic attack captured on film. With her daughter suffering from a mysterious illness requiring constant care, her husband absent on a months-long work assignment, a literal hole erupting through her bedroom ceiling, and her own mental health deteriorating by the hour, Linda becomes a case study in how much pressure a human being can withstand before shattering completely. Bronstein's first feature in 17 years is a surreal, expressionistic plunge into the impossible demands of contemporary motherhood, shot with the urgent intensity of the Safdie brothers' best work and edited with jagged precision that mirrors its protagonist's fractured psyche. Distributed by A24, this 2025 Film won't be for everyone—it's too uncompromising, too willing to make its heroine unsympathetic, too insistent on denying easy catharsis. But for those willing to endure its claustrophobic intensity, it's an extraordinary achievement.
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Director: Mary BronsteinWriter: Mary Bronstein
Cast: Rose Byrne, Conan O'Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Christian Slater, A$AP Rocky, Delaney Quinn, Mary Bronstein
Genres: Comedy, Drama, Thriller
Runtime: Approximately 2 hours
Release Date: October 10, 2025
Linda is drowning. Her unnamed young daughter—heard but almost never seen—requires round-the-clock medical care, connected to feeding tubes that beep incessantly throughout the day and night. Her husband Charles calls from thousands of miles away to criticize her parenting and demand she make appointments she can't seem to manage. Her own therapy patients are falling apart, including a new mother who literally abandons her infant during a session. Her therapist and office-mate has lost all patience with her. And now, a massive hole has erupted through her bedroom ceiling, forcing her and her daughter to relocate to a seedy off-season motel. Shot almost entirely in suffocating close-ups by cinematographer Christopher Messina, "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" doesn't just depict maternal anxiety—it replicates the sensation of being trapped inside it, unable to distinguish between minor inconveniences and genuine catastrophes because everything feels apocalyptic when you're operating on fumes.
Story and Screenplay
Mary Bronstein's screenplay is deceptively simple in plot but devastatingly complex in execution. There's no traditional three-act structure here, no rising action building to a climax—just a woman's continuous descent into psychological collapse, punctuated by moments of surreal horror and pitch-black comedy. The brilliance lies in how Bronstein refuses to provide backstory or context that might make Linda's situation more comprehensible or sympathetic. We're dropped directly into her nightmare and forced to experience it as she does: immediate, overwhelming, impossible to process.
The script's boldest choice is its radical subjectivity. We never learn Linda's daughter's name or see her face—she exists primarily as a voice (provided by Delaney Quinn) whining from off-screen, a shoulder that needs covering, a figure under a comforter. Christian Slater's husband is similarly reduced to an angry voice on the phone, always calling at the worst possible moment. These aren't budget-saving measures but deliberate artistic choices that reflect Linda's fragmented perception. Her daughter isn't a person to her anymore—she's become a manifestation of anxiety, a walking reminder of inadequacy, an obligation that drains every ounce of energy.
The dialogue oscillates brilliantly between the stilted language of therapy-speak ("It's not your fault," "You need to prioritize self-care," "Have you tried breathing exercises?") and Linda's increasingly frantic attempts to explain that none of these platitudes help when your entire life is falling apart. Bronstein has a sharp ear for how contemporary wellness culture often fails people in genuine crisis, offering meaningless affirmations instead of material support.
The screenplay's structure is elliptical and intentionally disorienting. Scenes crash into each other like waves, time becomes slippery, and we're never quite sure if what we're seeing is objective reality or Linda's paranoid interpretation. Is the hole in her ceiling really growing larger, or does it just feel that way? Are people genuinely hostile toward her, or has she lost the ability to read social interactions accurately? The ambiguity is the point—when you're drowning, it doesn't matter whether the water is ten feet deep or a hundred.
What prevents this from becoming oppressively bleak is Bronstein's willingness to find humor in the horror. The scene where Linda buys her daughter a hamster is simultaneously hilarious and disturbing. Linda's interactions with the motel clerk who won't sell her alcohol after hours, leading to an unexpected friendship with the superintendent James, provide necessary relief while also demonstrating how even kindness feels like too much when you're barely holding on.
Acting and Characters
Rose Byrne has been underutilized in studio comedies for years, but "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" unleashes something feral and extraordinary from her. This is a performance of such raw vulnerability and barely-contained hysteria that it's genuinely difficult to watch—which is the highest compliment I can give it. Byrne's face becomes a landscape of anxiety: perpetually creased brow, eyes that dart frantically or stare with thousand-yard exhaustion, a mouth that twitches between forced smiles and grimaces of pain.
What makes the performance so remarkable is Byrne's commitment to making Linda increasingly unsympathetic without ever begging for our forgiveness. She's neglectful, self-absorbed, occasionally cruel, and incapable of accepting help even when offered. She abandons her daughter to smoke weed and drink wine with a near-stranger. She tells her therapist she sometimes wonders if she should have kept her first pregnancy instead. She's a bad mother, a bad therapist, a bad friend—and Byrne never winks at the audience to assure us she's really a good person underneath. The performance trusts us to understand that someone can be both a victim of impossible circumstances and complicit in their own suffering.
The physical toll Byrne subjects herself to is evident in every frame. By the film's final act, she looks genuinely destroyed—sweaty, disheveled, eyes bloodshot from crying or lack of sleep or both. It's transformative work that deserves serious awards consideration, though the film's abrasive nature may make recognition unlikely.
Conan O'Brien's casting as Linda's therapist is a stroke of genius. Known as perhaps America's most naturally funny person, O'Brien is asked here to suppress every comedic instinct and play a man radiating barely-concealed contempt for his patient. Watching him fight his natural expressiveness to maintain a mask of therapeutic neutrality creates a fascinating tension. His few moments of breaking that mask—the flashes of irritation, the exasperated sighs—land with devastating impact because they confirm Linda's worst fears: even her own therapist has given up on her.
Danielle Macdonald brings necessary thematic depth as Caroline, another struggling mother whose postpartum crisis mirrors and amplifies Linda's. The scene where Caroline abandons her baby during a therapy session is initially shocking, but it becomes prophetic—Linda eventually does the same thing with her own daughter. Macdonald plays Caroline with such obvious desperation that we understand: this is what happens when mothers receive no support.
A$AP Rocky provides the film's only consistent source of warmth as James, the motel superintendent who befriends Linda despite—or perhaps because of—her obvious instability. Rocky's performance is natural, grounded, and genuinely likable, which makes Linda's inability to accept his friendship all the more tragic. He represents the possibility of human connection, and she's too depleted to reach for it.
Christian Slater, though mostly just a voice on the phone, effectively embodies the absent father whose distance allows him to critique without understanding. His constant demands—"Why haven't you fixed the ceiling?" "Why haven't you made the appointment?"—reveal the particular cruelty of partners who delegate the minutiae of care while maintaining the right to judge.
Direction and Technical Aspects
Mary Bronstein directs with the confidence of someone who spent 17 years between features thinking very carefully about how to tell this story. Working with cinematographer Christopher Messina (who shot the Safdie brothers' "Good Time"), she creates a visual language that's both claustrophobic and occasionally transcendent. The film lives in extreme close-ups of Byrne's face, denying us establishing shots or spatial orientation that might provide relief. When the camera does pull back, it's often to plunge into the darkness of the hole in Linda's ceiling—a cosmic void that becomes the film's central visual metaphor.
The opening credits sequence, which travels through the hole's darkness like a journey through a bodily orifice, immediately establishes the film's debt to "Uncut Gems" (produced by Bronstein's husband Ronald Bronstein). But where the Safdies' film found propulsive energy in chaos, Bronstein's approach is more suffocating and internalized. This is a thriller where the danger comes from within.
Bronstein makes bold formal choices that risk alienating viewers but pay enormous dividends. Keeping Linda's daughter faceless isn't just symbolic—it creates genuine discomfort, forcing us to confront how children can become abstracted obligations rather than individuals when parental burnout reaches crisis levels. The decision to render the husband as only a voice emphasizes Linda's isolation while also critiquing how fathers often exist peripherally to childcare.
The film's occasional surreal flourishes—Linda's visions of light and darkness, the hole that may or may not be growing, the ambiguous nature of her daughter's illness—are handled with restraint. Bronstein never commits fully to magical realism, leaving us uncertain whether we're seeing Linda's delusions or something genuinely otherworldly. This ambiguity is more effective than definitiveness would be.
Editor Lucian Johnston deserves special recognition for the film's jagged rhythm. Scenes don't flow smoothly into each other—they collide, overlap, fragment. The editing mirrors Linda's fractured mental state, creating a cumulative effect that's genuinely exhausting in ways that serve the material.
Music and Atmosphere
Rather than relying on a traditional score, "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" builds its soundscape from diegetic sources that become increasingly oppressive. The constant beeping of the daughter's feeding equipment follows Linda everywhere, a mechanical pulse that won't let her forget her obligations even for a moment. The ambient sounds of the motel—footsteps overhead, doors slamming, the hum of fluorescent lights—create a sonic environment that's hostile without being overtly threatening.
When music does appear, it's often Harry Nilsson's "Think About Your Troubles," a deceptively gentle song about the cyclical nature of existence. The lyrics about water bubbling to the ocean and returning to the sky become thematically crucial, suggesting that Linda's breakdown might be part of a necessary natural cycle rather than pure catastrophe.
The sound design creates a physical sensation of anxiety. The high-pitched beeps, the harsh fluorescent buzz, the muffled sounds of Linda's daughter crying from another room—it all accumulates into something that feels like an auditory panic attack. By the film's final act, you might find yourself holding tension in your shoulders or jaw without realizing it. The film doesn't just depict stress—it induces it.
Strengths and Weaknesses
What Works:- Rose Byrne's fearless, career-best performance that refuses to make Linda conventionally sympathetic
- Conan O'Brien's brilliantly against-type turn as a therapist radiating contempt
- Mary Bronstein's confident direction after 17 years away from features
- Christopher Messina's suffocating cinematography that traps us in Linda's deteriorating mental state
- The bold choice to keep Linda's daughter faceless, emphasizing her role as anxiety manifestation
- Jagged editing that mirrors psychological fragmentation
- Honest exploration of how wellness culture fails people in genuine crisis
- The film's willingness to find dark humor in horror
- Sound design that creates visceral physiological responses
- Ambitious formal choices that serve thematic purposes
- A$AP Rocky's grounded, warm supporting performance
- The refusal to provide easy answers or cathartic resolution
- The relentless intensity may be too punishing for many viewers
- Lack of conventional narrative structure could frustrate those expecting traditional storytelling
- The radical subjectivity means we never get alternative perspectives that might provide relief
- Some surreal elements feel less developed than others
- The film's length (nearly two hours) tests endurance even for sympathetic viewers
- Linda's increasing unsympathetic behavior may cause some to disengage
- The ambiguity about what's real versus imagined, while thematically justified, may feel frustrating
- Limited appeal beyond arthouse audiences willing to endure discomfort
- The ending, while poignant, may feel abrupt after such sustained intensity
Final Verdict
"If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" is not a film you enjoy—it's a film you survive. That's not a criticism but the highest praise for a work that so completely achieves its suffocating vision. Mary Bronstein has crafted what might be the most honest, least romanticized portrayal of maternal burnout ever committed to film. This isn't "Bad Moms" with its reassuring message that it's okay to be imperfect. This isn't even "Tully" or "Nightbitch," which, for all their darkness, ultimately offer some hope of salvation. "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" presents motherhood as a potentially psychologically destructive force and refuses to soften that reality.
What makes the film so affecting, despite—or because of—its unrelenting nature, is how it captures the particular terror of feeling responsible for everything while capable of nothing. Linda isn't just tired or stressed; she's fundamentally overwhelmed by the impossible expectations placed on contemporary mothers: be a perfect parent, maintain a career, manage a household, stay mentally healthy, support others emotionally, and do it all while making it look effortless. The film's title, taken from Linda's own therapy sessions, captures her complete powerlessness—she can't even kick the things causing her pain because she's too depleted to stand.
Rose Byrne's performance is nothing short of extraordinary. She's done excellent work throughout her career, but this is the role that should redefine how we think of her as an actor. The commitment required to play someone this raw, this unguarded, this fundamentally broken without ever asking for sympathy is rare. Byrne trusts the material enough to let Linda be genuinely difficult to watch, and that trust pays off in a performance that feels utterly authentic even as it exists within a heightened, expressionistic framework.
Bronstein's direction demonstrates remarkable maturity and confidence. The choice to shoot almost entirely in close-ups could have been a gimmick, but it becomes the film's defining strength, creating an almost unbearable intimacy with Linda's deterioration. The surreal elements—the growing hole, the visions of light and darkness, the ambiguous nature of the daughter's illness—never overwhelm the grounded emotional reality. Everything is filtered through Linda's perception, and Bronstein trusts us to understand that unreliable narrators can still reveal profound truths.
The film's relationship to comedy is fascinating. It's frequently hilarious in the darkest possible ways—Linda's attempts to buy alcohol, the hamster scene, Conan O'Brien's deadpan contempt—but the humor never undermines the horror. If anything, the comedy makes the film more disturbing by highlighting the absurdity of Linda's situation. When even objectively funny moments feel like attacks, you understand just how far she's fallen.
This is undeniably a difficult film that will alienate many viewers. It's too long, too intense, too willing to deny catharsis or conventional satisfaction. There's no triumphant moment where Linda gets her life together, no heartwarming reconciliation with her daughter, no villainous husband who can be blamed for everything. The film understands that sometimes there are no easy solutions to systemic problems, that individual resilience can only stretch so far before snapping.
Yet for those willing to endure its punishing intensity, "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" offers something rare: an unflinching examination of how the structures supposedly supporting mothers actually contribute to their breakdown. It's a film that will resonate painfully with anyone who's felt the particular exhaustion of caretaking, the guilt of not being enough, the rage at being blamed for circumstances beyond control.
The ending—which I won't spoil—manages to be both devastating and oddly hopeful, suggesting that sometimes the only way out is through complete dissolution. Like Harry Nilsson's song reminds us, water must return to the ocean before it can rise again as rain. Whether Linda's final act represents destruction or renewal remains deliberately ambiguous, but Bronstein earns the emotional complexity.
Recommended for: Fans of Rose Byrne seeking her best work, viewers who appreciated the anxiety-inducing intensity of "Uncut Gems" or "Good Time," arthouse audiences comfortable with experimental narratives, those interested in honest portrayals of maternal burnout, anyone who found "Nightbitch" too tame, cinephiles drawn to formally ambitious filmmaking.
Not recommended for: Viewers seeking uplifting or cathartic experiences, those sensitive to depictions of neglectful parenting, audiences preferring conventional narrative structures, anyone currently experiencing anxiety or depression (this film will not help), people looking for easy answers to complex problems about motherhood and mental health.
"If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" is now playing in theaters. For more adventurous and challenging Movie Reviews, explore our coverage of 2025 Movies and dive into our sections on Comedy, Drama, and Thriller cinema.
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