Movie · 2004 · Drama, Mystery · 1h 40m · R · English
Curator score: 1.0/10 (44.9K ratings)
Careful what you wish for.
Overview
It took Anna 10 years to recover from the death of her husband, Sean, but now she's on the verge of marrying her boyfriend, Joseph, and finally moving on. However, on the night of her engagement party, a young boy named Sean turns up, saying he is her dead husband reincarnated. At first she ignores the child, but his knowledge of her former husband's life is uncanny, leading her to believe that he might be telling the truth.
Ratings
Curator score: 1.0/10
IMDb: 6.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 43%
Metacritic: 51
TMDB: 6.0/10
Director
Jonathan Glazer
Production
Academy Films, New Line Cinema, Lou Yi, March Entertainment, Fine Line Features
Cast
Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall, Alison Elliott, Arliss Howard, Michael Desautels, Anne Heche, Peter Stormare, Ted Levine, Cara Seymour, Joe M. Chalmers, Novella Nelson, Zoe Caldwell, Charles Goff, Sheila Smith, Milo Addica, Mary Catherine Wright, Scott Johnsen, Elizabeth Greenberg
Curator Review
Verdict
A daring, emotionally serious ghost-story melodrama with extraordinary atmosphere and one of Nicole Kidman’s boldest performances, but its premise is so inherently provocative that the film’s restraint and deadpan commitment will alienate as many viewers as it fascinates.
Best for
Viewers who like eerie, high-concept dramas played completely straight
Fans of psychologically charged, visually controlled filmmaking
People interested in grief stories that lean uncanny rather than sentimental
Audiences open to slow-burn, unsettling mood pieces
Skip if
You want a conventional mystery with clear answers
You’re likely to be distracted by the premise’s taboo implications
You prefer emotionally warm or broadly accessible dramas
You dislike slow pacing and deliberately austere filmmaking
Overview
Birth is one of those films that feels designed to test whether a premise can be treated with total seriousness and still hold. Jonathan Glazer shoots it with icy precision, turning grief, desire, and uncertainty into something almost hypnotic. The result is less a supernatural mystery than a sustained emotional dare.
Worth noting
Nicole Kidman gives the movie its pulse, playing Anna as a woman suspended between mourning and the possibility of renewal. The film never asks you to relax into the absurdity of a child claiming to be her dead husband; instead, it makes the discomfort part of the point. That commitment is what makes it memorable, even when it feels willfully withholding.
Bottom line
What lingers most is the atmosphere: the elegant framing, the uneasy silences, and the score that keeps the whole thing hovering between romance and dread. It’s a divisive film, but a singular one, and it rewards viewers who like their melodrama strange, formal, and emotionally uncompromising.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Jake Isgar · 6516 likes
Kidman vs. Kid Man
Jay (4★) · 2763 likes
bored af might show up to some rich widows house to tell her im her reincarnated husband and see what happens
Sean Fennessey (4.5★) · 2536 likes
There is no movie like this. It never blinks or winks. It locks eyes with you and never breaks focus. Losing someone you love is something everyone experiences and almost everyone copes with. But nothing is ever healed and if faced with the same cosmically weird and yet practically undeniable circumstance as Anna does here, you’d be hard pressed not to explore, believe. The whole movie is an extraordinary act of commitment, and one in a long line of daring… more There is no movie like this. It never blinks or winks. It locks eyes with you and never breaks focus. Losing someone you love is something everyone experiences and almost everyone copes with. But nothing is ever healed and if faced with the same cosmically weird and yet practically undeniable circumstance as Anna does here, you’d be hard pressed not to explore, believe. The whole movie is an extraordinary act of commitment, and one in a long line of daring… more
Josh Lewis (4★) · 1776 likes
Glazer does the ghostly, queasy problematic age gap dynamic of The Innocents by way of the subjective, claustrophobic, wealthy New York dreamscapes of Eyes Wide Shut and Rosemary's Baby. Nicole even steals the haircut! Sometimes it can backfire but it's always fun to see such a ridiculous premise—in this case, a grieving woman's dead husband ostensibly reincarnated in the body of a young boy—realized so emotionally seriously; around the time she was trying to figure out the logistics of eloping… more Glazer does the ghostly, queasy problematic age gap dynamic of The Innocents by way of the subjective, claustrophobic, wealthy New York dreamscapes of Eyes Wide Shut and Rosemary's Baby. Nicole even steals the haircut! Sometimes it can backfire but it's always fun to see such a ridiculous premise—in this case, a grieving woman's dead husband ostensibly reincarnated in the body of a young boy—realized so emotionally seriously; around the time she was trying to figure out the logistics of eloping… more
manilazic (5★) · 1387 likes
This film gets more heartbreaking on every watch.
Glazer reaches towards the impossible to explore the very real feelings of grief and love. The improbable premise itself is enough to make your head spin: what if your dead husband came back, full of love for you? What if this love didn’t have to die?
As much as reincarnation is a fantasy, the fact that Anna’s grieving process could be interrupted by its possibility is fully credible. “I couldn’t tell him… more
2011 · Drama, Thriller · 1h 53m · R · Curator 6.8/10 (710.7K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Peacock Premium, Philo, MUBI, OVID, Cineverse, Midnight Pulp, Amazon Prime Video with Ads, Peacock Premium Plus
For its chilly, unsettling treatment of family, guilt, and emotional distance.