If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, 2025, 4 stars

Fixing a hole

Rose Byrne shines in dramatic nightmare

Exclusive to MeierMovies, October 7, 2025

After a burst water pipe blows a massive hole in her bedroom ceiling, Linda and her ill daughter, who is attached to a feeding tube through a hole in her stomach, must move into a hole of a motel. Meanwhile, her ship-captain husband is emotionally at sea, while Linda, a therapist, is herself in therapy. She has more holes in her life than Blackburn, Lancashire.

One thing without holes, however, is the film itself, for the oddly titled If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, the sophomore feature from writer-director Mary Bronstein (Yeast), is, unlike Linda’s broken pipe, water-tight. It does have something even more frightening, though: triggers. More than a Texas gun show. There’s violence, (simulated) animal suffering, child abandonment, abortion, property damage, near drowning, therapy gone wrong, stalking, body horror, drug abuse and plain old mental illness. And it’s all packaged in a partially surreal (almost absurd) and claustrophobically filmed package. Despite being billed as a comedy-drama, Legs – a weird, Lynchian blend of Mother! and Ordinary People – is one of the most nightmarishly uncomfortable films of the year. It’s also one of the best.

Rose Byrne plays Linda, and she’s never been better. As her therapist, Conan O’Brien is oddly cast but nevertheless effective, while Christian Slater, in a mostly voiceover role, plays Linda’s husband. More memorable are Danielle Macdonald (Dumplin’), as a disturbed patient of Linda, and ASAP Rocky, as Linda’s motel neighbor. But the film belongs to Byrne, who, in one extreme closeup after another, displays an almost unbearable vulnerability. Expect an Oscar nomination.

Last year, Nightbitch (starring Amy Adams, in an almost equally vulnerable performance) attempted a similar, though more light-hearted, commentary on the psychological trauma of motherhood. It mostly failed, as do many attempts to tackle this most universal of topics. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why Legs stands while other films fall, but the success seems to lie not so much in the writing as in Byrne’s performance, Christopher Messina’s cinematography, Lucian Johnston’s editing and, most of all, Bronstein’s direction, which methodically ratchets up the intensity to a nearly intolerable level. Frankly, I’m afraid to see her next film but, being a cinematic masochist, cannot wait.

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For more information on the movie, visit IMDB and Wikipedia. The film premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and is opening wide theatrically in the United States on October 10.