There's something deeply wrong with Linda. Or maybe it's the world around her that's broken—fractured ceilings, failing therapists, vanishing patients, and an illness in her child no one seems able to name. In Mary Bronstein's If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, the chaos doesn't just spiral—it implodes, and A24's just released trailer makes damn sure we feel the fallout.
Premiered at Sundance 2025 (to a chorus of uncomfortable chuckles and a few standing ovations), If I Had Legs I'd Kick You has since blitzed through Berlin (where Byrne won Best Leading Performance), Karlovy Vary, and Melbourne. It screens next at the Toronto International Film Festival this September as a Special Presentation, before landing in select U.S. theaters on October 10, 2025, courtesy of A24.
Poster Breakdown: Controlled Collapse
The newly unveiled poster does exactly what A24 posters often do best—it makes you uncomfortable just long enough to become curious. A tight, off-kilter close-up of Rose Byrne's Linda, mascara-flecked and water-eyed, gazing upward into what feels like existential freefall. The background is vaguely aquatic, cracked like drywall soaked in bad decisions. And the film's confrontational title—If I Had Legs I'd Kick You—slaps across her grief-stricken face like a threat, a cry, and a punchline all at once.
The typography screams ‘indie menace'—big, jagged, and unapologetic. But it's the quote placement that seals it. “Rose Byrne gives the performance of a lifetime,” says Vanity Fair, and for once, it doesn't feel like hyperbole. You believe it. You believe she believes it.
Trailer Dissection: Meltdown with Momentum
The trailer opens with something crashing—literally. A ceiling. A life. Byrne's voice is brittle, her expression elastic in all the wrong ways. There's a motel, a child, a ghost of a marriage, and Conan O'Brien (yes, really) playing the kind of disconnected authority figure who'd say “you're overreacting” while someone bleeds out in the corner.
Bronstein shoots like she's allergic to calm. Cuts come fast, colors swing between sterile blues and apocalyptic neons, and the pacing makes you feel like you're perpetually two seconds away from either laughter or panic. The tone recalls the emotional whiplash of Punch-Drunk Love and The Babadook, with just enough absurdist flair to keep you guessing.
This isn't a story about overcoming adversity—it's about drowning in it, with the camera holding your head under.
Why It Hits Harder Than It Should
Part of what makes If I Had Legs I'd Kick You resonate is that it doesn't chase neat metaphors or prestige gloss. It's raw, sometimes even ugly, and all the more honest for it. Byrne throws herself into the role like she's got nothing to lose—shaking, spitting, screaming, and collapsing in ways that feel less like performance and more like confession.
Bronstein—returning 17 years after her 2008 cult hit Yeast—directs like someone who's watched too many therapists close their notebooks. The result isn't just a film about motherhood. It's about the humiliating, exhausting task of being believed.
And that title? It's not just dark humor. It's a battle cry for everyone who's ever felt paralyzed in plain sight.
What Sets ‘If I Had Legs I'd Kick You' Apart
Unhinged Lead Performance
Rose Byrne ditches polish and plunges headfirst into one of the most emotionally volatile roles of her career.
A Poster That Hurts to Look At
A24's marketing leans into raw discomfort, with visual claustrophobia and confrontational type doing the heavy lifting.
Frenetic, Honest Trailer Tone
Mary Bronstein's direction weaponizes pace and sound to mirror a mother's unraveling mental state.
Genre Collision with Purpose
Equal parts domestic horror, dark comedy, and social satire—this one doesn't fit cleanly in any box.
Festival Pedigree
Sundance, Berlin, Karlovy Vary, Melbourne—and soon TIFF. This is not a quiet indie, it's a festival sledgehammer.
Real Stakes, Real Cracks
What starts as quirky dysfunction turns into a visceral depiction of modern burnout, without the filter of cinematic elegance.
If that poster made you wince, good. That means it's working. Now the real question: Are you ready to sit through it?
