Starring Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, and Lauren Bacall. Rated 14A.

Opens Friday, October 29, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Those of us not raised with the comforts of religion must make do with denial. It's not a great trade. The overwhelming probability that all of us, our successes and failures notwithstanding, will wind up in the alimentary canals of various larvae has made me a sucker for any movie that halfway plausibly suggests an alternative. Ghost, the Harry Potter films, The Sixth Sense, Ghost Dad... They're all good. Well, not Ghost Dad.

Which brings us to Birth. Directed by Jonathan Glazer, it is a compelling little drama about reincarnation. More specifically, it is the story of Anna (Nicole Kidman), a wealthy widow, and Sean (Cameron Bright), a 10-year-old who claims to be her late husband. At first, Anna reveals no particular inclination to believe. But when the boy reveals details of their life together--things only the real Sean could know--the situation goes from absurd to confounding. For Anna's patient suitor (Danny Huston), the (re)appearance of Sean is threatening. For Anna, it is disquieting...yet reviving.

Birth has a marvellously ambivalent attitude toward Sean. As a kid, he's preternatural and malign. Bright is sort of handsome, round-faced, with a piercing stare. You wouldn't say "cute" or "boyish". He's more like a Christopher Walken bobblehead doll.

The movie also asks: what was Sean like as a husband, before? Usually in movies, the reanimated dead guy is a saint or a demon. Sean was neither, but you get a few clues. He was a privileged guy living in a zillion-dollar (but faintly moldy) Manhattan apartment with a private elevator--class distinction is a huge part of the movie's subtext. His character? Well, look at the kid. Intense.

For a spectre, Sean is remarkably well fleshed out. And that's Glazer, finding emotion in minimalism. His camera moves are restrained but not uninventive. He frames tastefully and then lets the actor fill the space. In one scene, the camera slowly pushes in on Kidman for more than a minute. The scene is quietly nerve-shredding.

Glazer's debut movie, Sexy Beast, was a terrific romp. It featured great, flashy camerawork and the revelation that Ben Kingsley could play a psychopathic hooligan. Birth, the follow-up, is its photo negative. Cold, desaturated colour. Desiccated, unemotional characters. But, in its own way, Birth is fierce. It's certainly weird. And it might be great.