Birth vs What Lies Beneath

Anna is soaking in the tub—a tiny, inconspicuous tub, considering how otherwise amazing her apartment is—when Sean undresses and gets in with her. She asks, “What are you doing?” He says, “I'm looking at my wife.” Anna is in her thirties. Sean is ten. Whether or not Anna is actually his wife, in this life or any other, is the central dilemma of Birth, the latest movie by Jonathan Glazer, starring Nicole Kidman.

Anna and Sean were happily married until he died ten years ago. We see it happen in the film's opening scene. In a long, nearly unbroken shot, Sean jogs and jogs and jogs through Central Park, and eventually collapses in a tunnel. Simultaneously, a baby is being born. So, a decade later, when a boy named Sean shows up at Anna's home while she's throwing a birthday party for her mother, the audience probably automatically assumes he's who he says he is: Sean, the reincarnation of the other Sean, who was married to Anna. After all, we've been to the movies before, and we know that quiet, soulful kids are capable of so many things, much of them evil, but few of them dishonest. When a quiet, soulful kid in a movie tells you that, say, he sees dead people, you tend to believe him. He said he was her dead husband, and he seemed pretty serious, so I believed him.

Birth is smart in that it doesn't expose only Anna to this new, creepy, young Sean. Her family and friends see him too. So, she's not losing her mind, and she's not just getting cold feet about her pending marriage (although those things might be happening too.) So you there, in the audience, thinking that Sean 2 must be a ghost or a figment of Anna's imagination, well you'll need a new theory, because Lauren Bacall saw him too, and she doesn't have time for bullshit like imaginary middle-schoolers in her giant apartment. She's got cake to eat. Instead, Birth deals with each moment of Sean's arrival pretty much as you might, if you were incredibly rich and sad. Sean seems to know things about Anna and their marriage, but other details are foggy. When asked for information about his in-laws, he says “I'll know them when I see them.” And he does. Her brother interviews him on tape, and when Anna and her family listen later, well, he knows a lot of stuff, let's put it that way. Doing it on the green sofa, stuff like that. Eventually, though no one else is as convinced, Anna begins to warm up to this new Sean. He insists he's her dead husband, in a completely confident, adult way. He's not a whiny kid. Something's up. The camera stays right on Anna's face, as she listens to a symphony, and she realizes. She knows he's telling the truth. What she does about it, I'll leave for you to find out. What I will tell you is that Anna is played by Nicole Kidman, and she's everything you want in a scary movie: determined, nervous, and emotional. The problem, I suppose, is that Birth isn't scary. It's unnerving, to be sure. Scenes play out slowly, as the characters absorb information, and then, in case they might absorb a little more information at the last second, the scenes continue. The scene in the symphony is amazing, with emotion slowly creeping across Kidman's face. Other scenes though, are long just because. I'm all for a leisurely pace, but at one point, Anna and her fiancée settle down to bed, and I was positive the camera would just linger on them as they got a good night's sleep.

Birth has all the trappings of drawing room horror. Super close close-ups, shadowy lighting, and dramatic orchestral punctuations abound, but what we have mostly is the curious relationship between Anna and young Sean. After she comes to truly believe him, Anna becomes less and less interested in her adult fiancée, and more and more interested in maybe making a go of it with her quiet, serious new play-date. They have a funny conversation over sundaes, with Anna posing the question most of us had been wondering ever since the tub scene. How, exactly, will he be a husband to her? “I know what you're talking about,” he says. As Sean, Cameron Bright comes across as every bit wise-beyond-his-years enough to portray someone who believes he's a ten year-old thirty-five year-old. Bright has scenes mostly with Kidman, but also with Danny Huston (as Anna's fiancée, who I thought was being overly understanding, until he tackled a piano) and Anne Heche, as…well, if you see Birth, keep an eye on that one. That's all I'm saying. Bright is always steady and confident, and regardless if you believe his story or not, you can't take your eyes off of him. The end of Birth finds Sean up a tree, and Anna staggering on the beach, both completely spent from their ordeal. Whether you are or not depends on how patient you are. Birth has chills, to be sure, but they're mainly of the emotional variety. If you want genuine movie scares, well, you probably should have seen the one with Buffy and the Asian kid instead.

So, what's a guy to do? It's Halloween weekend, and I wanted a scary movie, and what I got wasn't a complete disappointment, but I was more in the market for something that makes me afraid to walk across the parking lot afterwards. I've also got a theme to deal with, and Birth hasn't made it easy. There are definite echoes of Rosemary's Baby, with Kidman's short hair, large apartment and scary child visitor; Ghost, with Kidman's short hair, large apartment, and dead husband (and you know I'm not making you watch that, so relax), and Kidman's own The Others, with its paranoia and sadness permeating every scene. Already recommended that one. Everything you've read so far has probably reminded you of The Sixth Sense. Too obvious? It's good, and holds up even after you know the ending, so go for it. Let's not aim that high though, okay? It's Halloween. You're stuffed with shitty candy (which is your own fault. I got Lemonhead and Dots. I'm sitting pretty), you're tired, and you just want to pass the time in a more productive way than Bravo's 100 Scariest Moments will allow (Seriously, Pacific Heights?) Watch What Lies Beneath and fall asleep on the couch. For a while there, it's pretty good. Hopefully, you'll pass out in a haze of Chewy Sweettarts before things get too cheesy.

In those early scenes, before we're sure it's a typical horror film, What Lies Beneath is more effective. Later, it turns into one of those movies where the unexpected bad guy is knocked cold but not really, and then he grabs someone's ankle as they try to get away. But before that, things just aren't right around the house. Michelle Pfeiffer plays a former cellist whose daughter has just gone off to college. She's alone in a great house with her second husband, Harrison Ford, and she's feeling a little bit of the pull of the empty nest. She's also experiencing doors opening by themselves, and a reflection in the bathtub that is very close to hers, but not quite close enough. And then there's the matter of the neighbor, with his possibly murdered wife, and there's the matter of the Ouijja board, which wouldn't lie, right?

Much of What Lies Beneath is sort of Hitchcock light. There's the seaside setting, the paranoid blond, the constant voyeurism, the mistaken identities, the duel personalities, the tidy wrap-up (the instant paralyzing drug is the sort of movie trick I normally don't fall for, but that rapidly-filling bathtub is a pretty scary murder weapon, so I'll let it slide.) It's fun though, so any similarities between What Lies Beneath, and say, every other movie ever made are pretty easy to brush aside.

What Lies Beneath is one of those movies in which we could just coast along, happy to be in the company of big movie stars, and let's face it, we sort of do. Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford were actors I could have sworn had appeared together before, but nope, this is it. They have chemistry, especially in the one scene everybody knows from What Lies Beneath (Pfeiffer, red dress, apple, “Your wife!” etc). I get pleasure from watching Ford play the bad guy (oh, come on, you know he's the bad guy), but it's mainly Pfeiffer's show. It's hard to tell if she's going crazy, or being Gaslight-ed, or if her house truly is haunted. If that's the case, then how come no one else knows? What's in the lake? What's in the tub? What's in the picture frame? She's good through it all, even in the end, when she's driving the pickup and freaking out. Like Kidman, she's blessed with a face that loves a close-up, and a bathtub she's going to want to replace as soon as possible.

Birth: B-
What Lies Beneath: B