'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You' Review: An Anxiety-inducing Portrayal of Motherhood With a Career Best by Rose Byrne
- Dan Bremner
- Oct 15
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 28
By Dan Bremner - October 15, 2025
Possibly the most unpleasant two hours I’ve had at this year’s London Film Festival, and I mean that as the highest compliment. Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an unflinching, nerve-shredding, and frequently horrifying portrayal of modern motherhood and psychological collapse. Going in, all I knew was the rumblings that it was “Rose Byrne’s Uncut Gems,” and that comparison couldn’t be more apt. Produced by Josh Safdie, the film radiates that same relentless, suffocating energy, but instead of diamond dealers and bookies, Bronstein roots her chaos in something far more domestic and recognizable: the quiet, private implosion of a mother on the edge.
What is 'If I Had Legs I’d Kick You' about?
Rose Byrne delivers what is easily the performance of her career in a role that's raw, harrowing, and painfully lived in. She plays Linda with such manic conviction and brittle humanity that you forget you’re watching a performance at all. Every flinch, every nervous laugh, every attempt to hold it together as her world collapses feels frighteningly authentic. It’s not a “big” performance in the traditional Oscar sense, it’s internalized, twitchy, desperate, and utterly riveting. Byrne weaponizes the very charm that made her a comedy regular, twisting it into something tragic and terrifying. If this doesn’t earn her a slew of nominations, something is very wrong with awards season. I've always been a fan of hers, so it was fantastic to see her branch out this wildly with a performance like this.
The supporting cast surrounding her is an eclectic stroke of genius. Christian Slater makes the most of his fleeting screen time as Linda’s elusive husband, a man so emotionally absent he practically feels like a ghost. Conan O’Brien, perfectly cast against type as her smugly detached therapist, brings both comic relief and unnerving distance, his scenes with Byrne are some of the film’s tensest and funniest. A$AP Rocky is surprisingly understated as the concerned (and probably too-cool-for-this-world) neighbours who momentarily punctures Linda’s downward spiral, while Danielle Macdonald’s brief turn as a client who abandons her baby mid-therapy session is both horrifying and darkly hilarious, summing up the film’s warped sense of humour in one outrageous moment.
The film’s portrayal of motherhood is brutally honest and emotionally scathing. It’s a portrait of anxiety, guilt, and helplessness that cuts like a knife, a depiction of the constant juggling act between love and resentment, protection and panic. Bronstein doesn’t romanticize Linda’s pain or offer easy catharsis, instead, she traps us inside her spiraling headspace. Every scene feels like a slow panic attack, with conversations escalating to screaming matches, minor inconveniences turning into full-blown crises, and reality slowly unraveling into paranoia. There are echoes of Tully and Nightbitch here, but this goes even further with some much darker, sharper, and more uncomfortably real in the most restless way possible.
Technically, it’s an astonishing piece of work. The sound design is suffocating in the best possible way with overlapping dialogue, pounding noise, and eerie silences that make you feel as though your brain is short-circuiting alongside Linda’s. The editing is erratic and nerve-wracking, with moments of stillness followed by sensory assault. The cinematography, full of tight, suffocating close-ups and warped handheld shots, mirrors Linda’s crumbling perception of reality, which is sometimes beautiful, often nightmarish. The result is a film that doesn’t just depict a breakdown, it becomes one. I wouldn't argue if anyone considered this well within the horror genre.
The influence of the Safdie Brothers is unmistakable, but Bronstein channels it into something distinctly her own. Where Uncut Gems is about external chaos and greed, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is about internal collapse and despair. Both films trap you in a state of unrelenting tension, but this one cut deeper emotionally. There’s humor, yes, a black, venomous kind that bubbles up in the most horrifying moments but even within the moments of levity, it's never less than uncomfortable.
By the time the credits roll, you’re left exhausted, disturbed, and weirdly exhilarated, as though you’ve survived something. Bronstein crafts a masterclass in controlled chaos, one that’s not just a story about motherhood, but about the terrifying fragility of keeping your sanity when everyone expects you to hold everything together. The only screening I've been to where the person sitting next to me was visible and audibly becoming anxious and on verge of a full-blown panic attack during a particular moment in the third act.
Is 'If I Had Legs I’d Kick You' Worth Watching?
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is motherhood portrayed as pure anxiety. A constantly uncomfortable, darkly funny and extraordinarily intrusive assault on the senses from Mary Bronstein while Rose Byrne gives the performance of her life and makes you feel every second of her relentless downward spiral. As engrossing as it is hard to watch.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You will premiere in the UK at the BFI London Film Festival on 13 October 2025, with an additional screening on 14 October 2025. The film will also be shown at the Belfast Film Festival on 4 November 2025.
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