If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
★★★★Worth watchingIs If I Had Legs I'd Kick You worth watching? (No spoilers)
A terrifying look at caregiving and parenthood, brutally showcasing what happens when life throws something at you that willpower alone can't beat. Rose Byrne gives a lifetime performance, and the filmmaking is perfect. It's stressful and painful to watch, but absolutely worth it.
⚠️ Spoiler warning: everything below the quick take, including the full review and ending explained, contains spoilers.
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You review
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is a terrifying look into the realities of caregiving and parenthood, and how overwhelming life can be when it throws something at you that is impossible to beat with pure willpower.
The acting was phenomenal, including Conan. The filmmaking was perfection. Showing the child and husband as only voices was an amazing way to tell us we are seeing her perception only. Her husband is far away emotionally and physically, and thus barely exists. While her child is the source of her struggles, and her disassociation makes it hard for her to see her as a person.
This is why both of them appearing at the end hits so hard, she finally doesn't feel as alone.
Her imitability to cope, leading to drugs and bad choices, hurts to watch. Not only because they are bad decisions, but because its so painfully understandable.
Seeing her both as a therapist to a woman in a similar spot, and as the patient was an amazing comparison and really made us connect with her.
I also loved the connection between the hole and her daughter. For most of the movie they are both things in her way, her daughter is no longer a person in her mind until the end of the film.
The ending is by far my favorite part. From the ridiculously long tube, to the hole magically disappearing, followed by her husbands return, dry clothing after the ocean, and a surprising appearance by her daughter, the audience is forced to come to their own conclusion.
What is being exaggerated by our protagonists mind? Did she actually die, hallucinating the final scene? How serious was the hole, if it really could be fixed in a day, and is there any coming back from the potential damage shes done to her daughter?
Overall an amazing film, led by a lifetime performance from the lead, and backed by extraordinary filmmaking.
Is If I Had Legs I'd Kick You scary?
Scare level: 2/5
It's not a horror movie, but it does feel like an anxiety attack. Constant stress, a claustrophobic camera that stays in Linda's face, some body-horror touches (the feeding tube) and an eerie, growing hole in the ceiling. No jump scares or gore; it's intense, not frightening.
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You ending explained
Linda removes her daughter's feeding tube before her daughter has reached the weight needed to have it out, and imagines the wound closing on its own. Her husband Charles comes home unexpectedly, telling her he was able to repair their ceiling in a day. Then he finds their daughter, tube hole still open, and freaks out.
Overwhelmed, Linda walks into the ocean and tries to drown herself, but the waves wash her back onto the beach. She wakes up with her daughter beside her, and for the first time in the film we actually see the girl's face. Linda promises to be better.
The film never tells you how much of this is real. Throughout the movie, the husband and daughter are mostly just voices, because Linda is so isolated and disconnected from them. Seeing them at the end shows she finally doesn't feel alone. But her dry clothes, the hole vanishing overnight, and the dreamlike beach leave it open: did she survive, is she imagining it, and can she repair the damage she's done?
Does If I Had Legs I'd Kick You have a post-credits scene?
No. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You has no mid-credits or post-credits scene.
Movies like If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
- Uncut Gems (2019) – a relentless, anxiety-inducing ride with a spiraling lead
- Tully (2018) – an exhausted mom slowly falling apart
- The Father (2020) ★★★★ – a story told entirely through one person's warped perspective
- Nightbitch (2024) – the surreal strain of motherhood