"Shiva Baby" Is an Awkward, Anxiety-Ridden Ride
By: Rachel McCloskey
Like any self-proclaimed cinephile, I often turn to Letterboxd, a social platform to share and review movies with friends. Among my watchlist, I stumbled upon Emma Seligman’s 2020 directorial debut, “Shiva Baby”, a movie I’ve been meaning to watch since, well – 2020. Coming in at a mere 78-minute watch time, I wondered how this quick flick eluded me for so long. After viewing it, I found out why.
My boyfriend and I set ourselves up for a relaxing Thursday night. Two glasses of red wine, no overhead light on, and a fuzzy blanket to share. We were ready to begin our movie. As it turns out, “Shiva Baby” is not a relaxing movie.
Starring Rachel Sennott, the film follows Danielle, a young bisexual Jewish woman navigating a Shiva, a Jewish mourning ritual, where her parents, her closest friends and family, her ex-girlfriend, Maya, and her sugar daddy Max are all in attendance. Not to mention her sugar daddy’s non-Jewish wife, Kim, and their screaming baby, Rose.
“Who the fuck brings a baby to a Shiva?” Danielle’s mother’s friend said.
Both tensions and my heart rate were high throughout this entire movie as Danielle made one rash and impulsive decision after another. From sending Max a nude photo during the Shiva to leaving her phone in the bathroom unlocked for Maya to find, it felt like watching a car wreck, and Danielle was in the driver’s seat. She was desperately incapable of controlling her surroundings and it seemed as if the walls of this home were caving in onto her.
The chaotic and awkward narrative only got worse as Danielle’s family and friends interrogated her about college, money, and boyfriends. The age-old question every college student who’s not studying business hears: “What are you going to do with your degree?”
Seligman managed to blend humor and pressure, proving “Shiva Baby” to be a masterclass movie in cringe, filled with painfully relatable social interactions and the kind of family dynamics that many can recognize – me included. It got to the point where I was wondering to myself, “At what point do I choose happiness and turn this off?” The setting is so claustrophobic, and Sennott’s performance of Danielle is great, as she only gets sweatier and sweatier throughout this film.
The musical score is another function that takes this movie exactly where it’s trying to go. Composed by Ariel Marx, the score unapologetically reflects the film’s mix of anxiety and absurdity through mirroring the emotional highs and lows that Danielle experiences. The rhythmic, pounding beats only added to the sense of urgency that Danielle felt, and that even I felt.
After concluding the movie, my boyfriend and I had to take a moment of silence to remember that everything Danielle just went through didn’t happen to us, that we were safe, that there was no Shiva going on in my own living room, and we still had each other. After 78 minutes of staring at the TV screen, not blinking, holding our breath in anticipation of something going horribly wrong, it was easy to forget those things.
According to Letterboxd user Will Menaker, “Hell isn’t hot. It’s cramped, all your closest friends and family are there, mostly everyone else is old and wretched and they suck the youth of you like marrow from bones, there’s no resolution or escape and your humiliation and discomfort just goes on forever.”
I haven’t stopped thinking about this review since I read it, and there’s truly no better way to say it.
Despite the sheer, skin-crawling uncomfortableness of “Shiva Baby”, it truly was a good movie. Just be sure to avoid it if you’re trying to relax on a Thursday night.