In Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, actress Rose Byrne delivers a riveting performance as a therapist pushed to her breaking point.

Linda (Rose Byrne), a therapist stretched to her limits, struggles to care for her young daughter (Delaney Quinn), who suffers from a mysterious illness that prevents her from eating. The child’s face is never seen, her condition worsening as she must be fed nightly through a tube. When the ceiling in their Montauk apartment collapses, flooding their home, Linda’s absent husband Charles (Christian Slater) offers only criticism from afar, leaving her to relocate with her daughter to a dingy motel. Overwhelmed both personally and professionally, Linda seeks guidance from her own therapist (Conan O’Brien), but he proves unsympathetic, offering little support as her life spirals out of control.

At the motel, Linda meets the sharp-tongued clerk Diana (Ivy Wolk) and the unpredictable superintendent James (A$AP Rocky), whose chaotic compassion both steadies and complicates her life. Her work continues to suffer, culminating in a violent encounter with a desperate client (Danielle Macdonald) and a reckless decision about her daughter’s care. When Charles finally returns to confront the damage, Linda flees to the ocean in despair, attempting to end her life. She awakens on the beach beside her daughter, clinging to a fragile hope that recovery might still be possible.

Byrne has two Emmy nominations under her belt, but her performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You has the potential to result in an Oscar nomination. It’s arguably a career-best work from the actress. Imagine the worst day of your life, then multiply it by infinity, sprinkle in parental panic, and serve it as a thriller—then you start to understand what Byrne’s character is juggling That’s what Byrne’s character is dealing with. If being flooded out of her apartment weren’t bad enough, it’s only made worse by everything else going on around her.

But Byrne’s performance isn’t even the biggest surprise of the entire film. No, that honor belongs to former late-night comedy talk show host Conan O’Brien. The comedian—currently the host of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend—really plays against type in his motion picture debut in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. The vast majority of his acting credits are either as himself or in voice roles, and his work here couldn’t be further from what audiences are used to seeing. My immediate thought when I saw his work was that there’s potential for a Best Supporting Actor nomination, which could mean pulling double-duty on Oscar Sunday—because why not make a stressful day even more stressful?

It’s an interesting choice to keep Charles and Linda’s daughter off screen until the final minutes of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Up until those final minutes, I was wondering if it would just be one of those things where an actress is heard and never seen, especially given the character’s health condition.

Given how much parental anxiety is playing out on screen, I don’t think it’s unfair to refer to If I Had Legs I’d Kick You as a horror film. One scene had me looking away—and I’m already prone to horror because of nightmares. You’ll understand why when you watch the film. The movie itself shows a dark and underexplored side of motherhood: when celebrated qualities of care no longer work anymore. Bronstein drew from her own maternal experiences in writing the script, and it really shows in the film.

DIRECTOR/SCREENWITER: Mary Bronstein
CAST: Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Christian Slater, ASAP Rocky

A24 released If I Had Legs I’d Kick You in theaters on October 10, 2025. Grade: 4/5

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