PLOT: With her husband away for work, a working mother (Rose Byrne) whose daughter suffers from a chronic illness finds her sanity hanging by a thread.
REVIEW: While it’s not a horror movie, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You was the scariest movie playing at Sundance this year. A depiction of how motherhood can occasionally seem oppressive, this is the pitch-black nightmare version of the ultimately reassuring Nightbitch. Written and directed by Mary Bronstein, this intense, grim, but also darkly humorous film will likely be a controversial release for A24, with it playing out like a descent into madness that offers no reassuring moments of catharsis.
Rose Byrne gives a tour-de-force performance as Linda. Despite working as a therapist, her sanity is hanging by a thread, with her husband (Christian Slater) in the Navy and away for an eight-week deployment, which has left her juggling a myriad of weighty responsibilities. Her daughter, who is unnamed and unseen throughout the film (except for her constant off-screen whining), is needy and also suffering from a chronic illness that has her hooked up to a feeding tube. The fact that she’s unable to gain enough weight to get off the tube is treated by her medical staff as a kind of mortal failing of Linda’s, whose abilities as a mother they constantly question. To make things worse, the ceiling of her apartment has collapsed, forcing her to relocate her daughter to a sleezebag motel. At the same time, she also has a patient (Danielle Macdonald) who’s vanished, leaving behind her baby.
Struggling to juggle her responsibilities, she turns to a fellow therapist (Conan O’Brien, who’s impressive in a rare acting role), who seems as unable to help her as she is to help her own patients. Byrne’s performance carries the entire film, with her never better than she is as the complicated Linda. Despite her many questionable choices, including her habit of leaving her ill daughter alone while she gets drunk on convenience store wine, you feel a lot of sympathy for her. Her life starts to feel like a horror movie, as no matter what she does, everyone around her views her as a failure.
While it sounds grim (and it is), If I Had Legs I’d Kick You also has some blackly humourous set pieces, such as a bit where Linda gives in and buys her daughter the hamster she’s been begging for, with grotesque results. Conan O’Brien is excellent as her therapist, who treats her with a frustratingly professional reserve, even as she looks to him for the validation and love he knows it’s not his responsibility to provide. Rapper ASAP Rocky also pops up and steals some scenes as the superintendent of Linda’s motel, with whom she starts an unlikely friendship centred mainly around weed and surfing the dark web for drugs.
Produced by Josh Safdie, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You has the same kind of stressful, nightmarish energy evident in Uncut Gems and Good Time. Linda’s descent is extreme and never lets up. Parents might find themselves cringing throughout, while folks thinking of starting a family might want to avoid this one, as it’s not the most glowing endorsement for parenthood I’ve ever seen. The movie makes it seem like a nightmare, but I’m sure it can sometimes feel that way for some people, leaving this as a movie that should strike a chord for many. It’s not a film I’d call enjoyable, as it’s a harrowing journey to go along on, but it’s challenging, immersive, and well worth checking out.
