The metaphysical mystery Birth looks suspiciously like a homage to Roman Polanski's horror masterpiece, Rosemary's Baby.

Nicole Kidman even sports a version of the pixie hairstyle Mia Farrow used for the woman who would give birth to Satan's child.

Kidman's Anna in Birth becomes similarly possessed and it could be demonic, or at least that's what audiences hope.

The opening sequence of Birth details how Anna's husband Sean died while jogging in Central Park.

She continues to mourn him for 10 years and just when she announces her engagement to her most-patient suitor, Joseph (Danny Houston), a young boy named Sean (Cameron Bright) turns up at her luxury apartment to advise against the marriage.

Young Sean insists he is the reincarnated spirit of her husband and he has an uncanny knowledge of that former courtship and union.

It's a scary prospect for Anna, her fiance, friends and family, and it should be for the audience as well.

Birth could have been as haunting as Kidman's The Others or Bruce Willis's The Sixth Sense, but director Jonathan Glazer refuses to play that supernatural horror card.

Instead, he makes Birth creepy for other reasons.

Anna eventually accepts Sean's claims that he is the new embodiment of her dead husband.

She watches him lovingly as he plays on the monkey bars at the local kiddie park, shares desserts with him, invites him for sleepovers, tucks him into bed, encourages him in his rebellion against his own parents and even allows him to strip naked and bathe with her.

In one of the film's more unsettling moments, Anna looks at Sean and remarks that she's trying to imagine what he will look like at age 21 when she feels they can finally consummate their second union.

Consider that she'll be 48 when he turns that magical age and all of Kidman's magnificent icy control seems more perverse than smitten.

Kidman walked this same morally ambiguous ground in Gus Van Sant's To Die For, but at least her young lover was a teenager.

What Birth confirms is that Kidman is one of the finest actors of her generation.

She can hold the screen for long periods with just a gaze and can deliver the corniest of lines with powerful conviction.

It's Kidman's riveting performance and not the plot that creates what little tension there is in Birth.

Bright's performance is diminished for anyone who saw him do virtually the same thing earlier this year in the Robert De Niro horror flick The Godsend.

Still, it's an eerie, mature performance and more effective this time around.

As Anna's mother, Lauren Bacall becomes the voice of reason, while Anne Heche, as a forgotten friend, shows Anna is not the only one teetering on the brink of madness.

Birth is a sumptuous film with beautiful cinematography and a lush soundtrack, but they're wasted on a film that boasts neither great scares or shocking plot twists.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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