IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU(2025)

Title: If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Written by: Mary Bronstein

Draft date: Not specified

LOGLINE

A fraying therapist and mother struggles to hold her life together while her young daughter undergoes treatment for a severe eating disorder, her apartment ceiling collapses into an ever-growing hole, and her absent husband leaves her to manage everything alone — until the boundaries between caretaker and patient, control and surrender, begin to dissolve entirely.

Genre: Drama

Sub-genre: Psychological Drama, Domestic Drama

Keywords: Female Protagonist, Motherhood, Mental Health, Eating Disorder, Therapist, Unseen Child, Surrealism, Guilt, Caretaker Burnout, Suburban Setting, Extended Stay Hotel, Body Horror, Breathwork, Absent Husband, Patient-Therapist Dynamics

MPA Rating: R (pervasive strong language, drug use, disturbing imagery, thematic content involving child illness)

Budget Tier: Low ($1M–$10M) — limited locations (hotel, apartment, office building, beach), small cast, minimal VFX needed for surreal sequences (hole effects, void imagery, unseen child technique), contemporary setting

Pages: 131

Time Period: Present, over approximately 2-3 weeks

Locations: Approximately 40% extended stay hotel (room, lobby, hallway, pool area) in Del Mar, California. 25% office building housing therapy practices (Linda's office, therapist's office, hallway, kitchen). 15% Linda's water-damaged apartment (bedroom with large hole in ceiling, living room, bathroom). 10% child's treatment program (hallway, conference room, parking lot). 10% exteriors including suburban streets, little league baseball field, beach, railroad tracks, cliff. The apartment bedroom requires a practical collapsing ceiling with water effects, a large hole with lighting rigs for surreal sequences, and fly swarm effects. The hotel room requires a functional feeding tube machine prop.

Lead: Female, late 30s to mid-40s, White. Formerly "cool" but now barely holding together — tattooed, dressed in expensive clothes that read as effortful, exhausted, sharp-tongued, controlling, deeply guilt-ridden, self-medicating with wine and marijuana.

Comparables: Tully (2018) — overwhelmed mother on the verge of psychological collapse with surreal elements; The Lost Daughter (2021) — unflinching exploration of maternal ambivalence and guilt; Babadook (2014) — psychological horror rooted in a mother's deterioration while caring for a difficult child; Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) — marital strain under the pressure of solo parenting, though Bronstein's register is far darker and more interior.

SYNOPSIS

LINDA (38-45), an exhausted therapist and mother, sits in DR. SPRING's office with her seven-year-old daughter, CHILD, who is never visually shown. Child describes Linda as "stretchable" like putty. Linda insists she wants Child's feeding tube removed, believing the safety net prevents recovery. Child screams that removing it will kill her.

Walking home with pizza, Child's extreme food aversions emerge — she cannot eat cheese or sauce with herbs. Linda trips, the pizza lands upside down, and the cheese sticks to the box lid, which Child celebrates. At their apartment, Linda scrapes cheese off pizza for Child while secretly stuffing it in her own mouth. Child discovers water on the bathroom floor. Linda traces it to her bedroom, where the ceiling is gushing water. The ceiling collapses catastrophically, destroying the room. Linda and Child flee.

A surreal sequence drifts into the hole, through darkness and muffled voices, into a void where a female figure reaches toward the camera. Linda and Child are now living in an extended stay hotel in Del Mar, California, where Child sleeps attached to a feeding machine that beeps through the night. Linda sneaks outside to smoke joints on an abandoned baseball field, monitoring Child through a baby monitor. She meets JAMES (mid-20s), a charismatic hotel resident.

Linda's days are consumed by competing demands. Her husband CHARLES is away working on a boat and calls to pressure her about the apartment. Dr. Spring urges Linda to schedule a family therapy session and warns that Child must reach 50 pounds within a week or face reassessment. Linda sees her own THERAPIST daily, where sessions reveal her feelings of helplessness and her growing boundary violations — leaving Child alone at night, drinking, smoking pot.

Linda treats her own patients: CAROLINE (late 20s), a new mother convinced something is wrong with her baby RILEY, who confesses guilt over accidentally rolling onto him while breastfeeding. Linda advises Caroline to take baths and get out of the house. STEPHEN (late 20s), a patient who shares dreams about kissing Linda. KATE (25), a privileged woman whose sessions Linda barely attends to mentally.

Linda visits her apartment and finds the hole growing larger, with strange ethereal lights inside it. She whispers "Mom?" at ghostly shapes in a mirror. A blinding light from the hole knocks her down. She begins experimenting with holotropic breathwork, which triggers a vision of holding down her screaming daughter during a medical procedure. The breathwork leaves her physically incapacitated.

Caroline abandons baby Riley in Linda's office during a session. Linda searches frantically, enlists reluctant help from Therapist and colleague MICHELLE, then calls Caroline's husband NICK, who claims he didn't know Caroline was in therapy. Police take Riley. Later, Caroline sends Linda an email reading "I AM TRYING NOT TO BE HER" with attached video of Andrea Yates's psychiatric interview.

Linda takes James to see her apartment's hole. When James blows smoke toward it, the hole spits debris back. They explore the upstairs apartment and peer down through the hole, witnessing a surreal vision of a woman — who appears to be Linda — stabbing herself open to reveal cavernous black voids in her body. James falls through the hole and breaks his leg. Linda flees back to the hotel.

At a parent group session, Linda erupts, insisting the children's illnesses are the parents' fault, contradicting Dr. Spring's message about blame and shame. She storms out. Therapist tells Linda he is terminating their therapeutic relationship. Caroline appears at the hotel lobby, slaps Linda, and flees toward the beach. Linda chases her but loses her in the darkness, destroying the baby monitor on rocks during the pursuit.

Alone in the hotel room, Linda pulls Child's feeding tube out of her body while she sleeps. The machine goes silent for the first time. The hole in Child's abdomen begins to close on its own. Linda races to the apartment and finds CHARLES (50) has arrived and hired workers who have already repaired the ceiling hole.

Back at the hotel, Charles discovers James in the room — James had heard Child screaming alone and entered to comfort her. Charles and James fight. Linda bolts, running through the hotel, past the field, across railroad tracks, to the beach. She tries repeatedly to swim into the ocean but is thrown back by waves. Lying on the sand, she enters breathwork breathing and slips into the void, where the female figure beckons. Child's voice pulls her back. Linda opens her eyes to find Child — fully visible for the first time — kneeling beside her, singing their bedtime song. Charles approaches, smiling. Linda promises to be better.

COMMENTS

PREMISE — Good

The premise establishes an immediately compelling collision between a woman's professional identity as a healer and her inability to heal — or even adequately care for — her own child. Linda is a therapist whose daughter has a severe eating disorder requiring a feeding tube, whose apartment has a gaping hole in the ceiling, and whose husband is absent for weeks at a time. The concept is rich with inherent irony: the person others pay to listen cannot get anyone to listen to her. The dramatic question — can Linda keep functioning, and at what cost? — generates tension from the opening scene, where Child's description of Linda as "stretchable" establishes the central metaphor. The hole in the ceiling functions as both a practical problem and a psychological symbol, and its escalation into surreal territory gives the material a genre dimension that distinguishes it from comparable maternal-crisis dramas like Tully or The Lost Daughter. The premise's chief risk is that its protagonist is not pursuing a goal so much as enduring a siege, which places enormous pressure on character and craft to sustain engagement.

STRUCTURE — Fair

The narrative operates as a downward spiral punctuated by escalating crises rather than a traditional three-act arc, which is fitting for the material but creates structural softness in the middle stretch. The inciting incident — the ceiling collapse (8-9) — arrives promptly and displaces Linda into the hotel that becomes the primary setting. The first major complication, Dr. Spring's ultimatum about the 50-pound weight goal (20-21), establishes a ticking clock that should drive the middle section but recedes from focus for long stretches. The midpoint functions as a cluster of events — Caroline abandoning Riley (73-79), the apartment visit where the hole attacks James (95-99) — rather than a single turning point, which diffuses momentum. Therapist's termination of Linda (109-110) arrives at roughly 83% and serves as a clear "all is lost" beat. The climax — Linda pulling the tube, finding the apartment repaired, and running to the beach (121-131) — delivers genuine emotional force. However, the Caroline subplot, while thematically resonant, does not resolve and operates almost as a parallel narrative rather than a subplot that feeds the throughline. Several scenes in the middle third — the CVS visit (84), the Dr. Phil viewing (40-41), the dark web sequence (67-70) — function more as texture than as structural necessities.

CHARACTER — Good

Linda is a vividly drawn protagonist whose contradictions generate most of the material's power. She is a caregiver who cannot care for herself, a therapist who demands her own therapist tell her what to do, a mother who loves fiercely and yet keeps fleeing. Her want (to fix everything — Child, the apartment, her life) and her need (to accept what she cannot control and remain present) are clearly established and in productive tension. Her active choices — pulling the tube (121), confronting the hole, chasing Caroline — demonstrate agency even as she spirals. However, the arc's resolution feels compressed: the promise "I'll be better" (131) arrives after a breathwork sequence and Child's singing, but the internal shift that makes this moment earned rather than aspirational is not fully dramatized on the page. Charles, who appears primarily as a voice on the phone until page 123, functions more as a pressure source than a character. James is colorful but his motivations remain opaque — his willingness to involve himself in Linda's life lacks sufficient grounding beyond proximity and boredom. Caroline is the most compelling supporting figure, whose parallel experience of maternal crisis mirrors and intensifies Linda's, though her disappearance from the narrative after the beach chase (120) leaves a significant thread dangling.

CONFLICT — Good

The central conflict is Linda versus the impossibility of her situation — a sick child, an absent husband, a destroyed home, professional obligations, and her own psychological fragility — which generates sustained pressure throughout. The external conflicts are numerous and well-differentiated: Dr. Spring's clinical demands (20-21, 86), Charles's expectations (15-16, 104-105), the landlord's negligence (28-29), the parking attendant's harassment (17-18, 49-51, 105-106). The internal conflict — Linda's belief that she is fundamentally not meant to be a mother (109) battling against her obvious love for Child — is the emotional core and surfaces powerfully in the therapy scenes. Scene-level conflict is consistently present, from the pizza walk (4-5) to the hamster car sequence (55-58) to the confrontation with James in the hallway (126-128). The escalation toward the climax is effective, though the supernatural elements of the hole create a second axis of conflict (the apartment as antagonist) that operates on different rules than the psychological realism, and these two registers do not always reinforce each other cleanly.

DIALOGUE — Excellent

The dialogue is the material's most consistently accomplished element, characterized by specificity, subtext, and sharp differentiation between characters. Linda's voice is distinctive — clipped, defensive, darkly funny, and prone to deflection that reveals more than directness would. Her exchange with Therapist about the dream ("You got to tell me. We can talk more about it next time" / "We will not talk about it next time, you know that. There is no thread, no thread at all," 26) captures the futility she feels in a single exchange. Child's dialogue is convincingly precocious without being precious ("Mommy is stretchable," 2; "I can tell I might not be hungry," 4). Caroline's increasingly fragmented speech pattern tracks her deterioration effectively (72-74, 118-119). James speaks in a register distinct from every other character — casual, provocative, unbothered ("Anything can be real... And anything can be bullshit," 13). The one area where dialogue strains is in the professional therapy scenes between Linda and her patients, where exposition about Linda's emotional state occasionally becomes too transparent through Caroline's mirroring function (31-32).

PACING — Fair

The material's pacing mirrors Linda's experience — relentless, exhausting, and punctuated by moments of surreal suspension — which is effective as a strategy but creates stretches that test engagement. The first thirty pages move briskly, establishing Linda's world with economical scenes that layer crisis upon crisis. The middle section, roughly pages 40-90, contains the most drag, particularly in sequences that establish atmosphere without advancing plot: the Dr. Phil viewing (40-41), the dark web browsing (67-70), and the CVS errand (84) all contribute to the texture of Linda's life but could be tighter. The holotropic breathwork sequences (91-93) create effective pauses that function as psychological set pieces, though the second void sequence (130) arrives at a point where forward momentum matters most. The hamster car chase (55-58) and Caroline's disappearance from the office (73-79) are the pacing highlights — tense, surprising, and propulsive. The final fifteen pages accelerate effectively, with the tube removal, Charles's arrival, and the beach sequence building to a genuinely climactic emotional pitch.

TONE — Fair

The tonal register is the material's most ambitious and most precarious quality — it operates simultaneously as domestic realism, dark comedy, and surrealist psychological horror, and the transitions between these modes are not always seamless. The grounded sequences (therapy sessions, hotel life, parenting moments) are tonally assured, carrying a specificity that feels lived-in and true. The comedy — the pizza incident (5), the hamster escape and death (55-58), Linda's interactions with the front desk guy about wine (12-13, 41) — is genuinely funny and arises organically from Linda's desperation. The surreal sequences (the void at 9-10, the apartment visions at 48, 97-99) shift the register sharply toward horror, and while individually striking, their relationship to the realistic material is not always legible. The scene where James and Linda witness the doppelgänger Linda stabbing herself open (98-99) is the most jarring tonal shift, introducing body horror imagery that the surrounding domestic drama has not fully prepared for. The decision to never show Child is a bold tonal choice that maintains an unsettling ambiguity throughout.

ORIGINALITY — Good

The premise of a therapist-mother in crisis is not novel — Tully, The Lost Daughter, and numerous domestic dramas have explored maternal ambivalence and breakdown. What distinguishes this material is the formal conceit of the unseen child, which transforms every domestic scene into something uncanny and forces engagement with Linda's subjectivity in a way that a conventional presentation would not. The hole-as-metaphor is not subtle, but its escalation from plumbing disaster to supernatural entity to parallel with Child's feeding tube site is executed with genuine inventiveness. The mirroring between Linda's professional life (listening to patients whose problems echo hers) and her personal collapse is structurally clever, particularly the Caroline subplot, which functions as a dark funhouse reflection. The breathwork sequences offer a mechanism for surreal interludes that is grounded in contemporary wellness culture rather than generic dream logic, which gives the surrealism a specificity that Babadook-style domestic horror often lacks. The hamster's violent death, the wine-buying difficulties, and the parking attendant as recurring antagonist are all details that feel genuinely fresh for the genre.

LOGIC — Poor

The internal logic is largely sound within the realistic register but becomes strained where the surreal elements intersect with the grounded narrative. The feeding tube mechanics are handled with enough specificity to feel researched — the machine's beeping, the calorie calculations Linda rattles off (54), the milky liquid — which makes the tube-removal scene (121) credible as a desperate act. However, the hole's behavior is inconsistent: it spits debris at James (96) and emits blinding light at Linda (48), but these events have no consequences and are never discussed by characters who should be alarmed. James falls through the hole and breaks his leg (99), yet the aftermath is handled almost comically rather than as the serious event it would be — no hospital scene, no police, no liability concern. Linda's ability to leave Child alone repeatedly without consequences until the final confrontation strains credibility; the extended stay hotel's complete indifference to a child left alone nightly requires more setup than the sleepy front desk attendant provides. Caroline knowing where Linda lives (117) is explained with "I accidentally followed you one time," which is thin justification for a stalking-adjacent revelation.

CRAFT — Good

The writing operates in a heightened naturalistic register that is distinctive and effective, particularly in its stage directions. Linda's introduction — "Her entire look says, 'Look, I'm trying here. What do you want from me?'" (2) — establishes voice and character simultaneously. The decision to present Child as unseen is communicated clearly in the opening note and maintained with disciplined consistency, with small physical details (dangling feet from the toilet at 7, hands gripping the hamster box at 55) creating presence without visibility. Action lines are generally lean and purposeful, though some surreal passages overwrite ("The void now feels like we are drifting in dust, weightlessness," 10). The intercutting of the Andrea Yates interview audio over Kate's session (112) is a sophisticated craft choice that communicates Linda's psychological state without dialogue. Formatting is clean throughout. Minor issues include a misspelled character name ("DR. DPRING" for "DR. SPRING," 21) and occasional redundancy in scene headers for the same location. The use of real cultural artifacts — Guided by Voices, Harry Nilsson, Dr. Phil, Janis Joplin — grounds the material in a specific sensibility without feeling like a playlist.

OVERALL — Recommend

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is a psychologically dense domestic drama about a therapist-mother buckling under the weight of her daughter's eating disorder, her collapsing apartment, and her own unexamined guilt, rendered through a formally adventurous conceit in which the child is never shown. The strongest elements are the dialogue, which is sharp, funny, and revelatory across every register, and the character of Linda, whose contradictions — competent professional and desperate mother, fierce protector and chronic abandoner — generate compelling friction in nearly every scene. The craft is assured, with a distinctive voice that balances specificity and restraint. The weakest elements are the structural softness in the middle third, where atmospheric scenes accumulate without sufficient forward drive, and the tonal integration of the surreal sequences, which are individually striking but whose relationship to the grounded drama is not always earned. The Caroline subplot raises the emotional and thematic stakes effectively but lacks resolution. The ending — Child made visible, the promise to be better — is moving but risks feeling like aspiration rather than transformation, as the internal shift that would support it is not fully dramatized before the final sequence. This is ambitious, deeply felt material with a strong central performance vehicle and a premise that lingers. Its challenges are the challenges of reaching for something genuinely difficult.