BloodyFM Blog
‘Birth’ Was So Much More Than Its Notorious Bathtub Scene [Horror Queers Podcast]
BloodyFM Blog / Updated: April 02, 2025
The Bath Tub Scene
We spent the first half of September with discussions of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (listen) and Colm McCarthy’s The Girl With All the Gifts (listen) before celebrating our 300th episode (and the start of a six-week theme on Divas/Anniversaries) with a revisit of Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body (listen). Next up: Nicole Kidman in Jonathan Glazer‘s unfairly controversial 2004 sophomore feature, Birth.
Kidman stars as Anna, a widow who is still grieving her husband’s sudden death ten years later. Despite being newly engaged to Joseph (Danny Huston), Anna upends her entire life when 10-year-old Sean (Cameron Bright) appears in her apartment, claiming to be her dead husband.
As her concerned family, including matriarch Eleanor (Lauren Bacall) and brother-in-law Bob (Arliss Howard) question the boy, new details about Anna’s marriage emerge courtesy of dead Sean’s brother Clifford (Peter Stormare) and his wife, Clara (Anne Heche).
Has Sean really been reincarnated? Or is the young boy playing a malicious prank? And what is Anna willing to give up to find out?
Episode 301 – Birth (2004)
It’s a ‘Joe pick’ for the second week of our Gay Icons & Anniversaries theme as the boys discuss Jonathan Glazer’s modern classic Birth (2004).
Starring Nicole Kidman as a woman grieving her dead husband, Birth was a lightning rod for controversy, but it’s so much more than its bathtub scene and reincarnation plot.
Plus: why Bright’s casting prompted a complete script rewrite, ties to Rosemary’s Baby, a superb Anne Heche, and the two minute long take that should have earned Kidman an Oscar nom. This is a gay masterpiece, people!
Cross out Birth!
