Shiva Baby (2020)
★★★½ — Shiva Baby (2020)
Shiva Baby arrived in 2020 as something of a word-of-mouth event, making the rounds on the festival circuit before finding its audience through streaming. Written and directed by Emma Seligman, the film grew out of her short of the same name from 2018, expanding the premise into a feature-length exercise in confined social horror. Clocking in at just 78 minutes, it is a lean, purposeful piece of work, produced through a small collection of independent outfits, Neon Heart Productions, Dimbo Pictures and It Doesn't Suck Productions, which tells you something about the scrappy, self-made spirit behind it. The premise is deceptively simple: a college student named Danielle arrives at a shiva with her parents, only to find her sugar daddy also in attendance, alongside her ex-girlfriend and a full supporting cast of relatives and family friends with very firm opinions about what she should be doing with her life. What unfolds from that starting point is less a plot-driven comedy and more a sustained study in social catastrophe.
For Seligman, this was her feature debut, and it announced her as a director with a distinctive and confident sensibility. Rather than opening the film out in the way that many first-time directors feel pressure to do, she doubled down on constraint, keeping the camera close, the rooms crowded and the atmosphere wound tight. It is the sort of formal discipline that is easier to admire in retrospect than to pull off in practice, and it gives the film a texture that sits somewhere between social comedy and psychological thriller. The score, composed by Ariel Marx, has drawn particular attention for leaning heavily into strings and dissonance in a way that has more in common with a horror film than a kitchen-sink drama, and it is very much part of what makes the experience feel so physically uncomfortable in the best possible way. If you are interested in how films from this decade have been finding fresh approaches to familiar genres, it is worth glancing at some other recent work reviewed here, including Moshari, another 2020s film that plays with genre expectations, and All That's Left of You, also from the current decade.
The cast is small but well chosen. Rachel Sennott, in the central role of Danielle, carries almost every scene, and her performance is a study in controlled unravelling, the kind of work that looks effortless and almost certainly is not. Molly Gordon plays her ex-girlfriend, bringing an awkward, loaded history to every exchange between them. Polly Draper and Fred Melamed appear as Danielle's parents, polished but unremarkable on the surface while quietly radiating the particular pressure of parental expectation. Danny Deferrari rounds out the principal cast as the sugar daddy whose presence at the shiva sets the whole uncomfortable machinery in motion. It is an ensemble that works because nobody is playing for laughs in any obvious way; the humour, when it comes, emerges from recognition rather than performance. For a sense of how comedy can work in very different registers, it is worth comparing it to something like Megdan: Between Water and Fire, another comedy reviewed here, or the very different tonal world of Trolls.
Shiva Baby (2020) is a masterclass in sustained, low-stakes anxiety. A film that transforms a single suburban home during a shiva (which I guess is like a Jewish wake) into a pressure cooker of social dread. Almost entirely confined to one location, Emma Seligman's debut wrings unbearable tension from the simple horror of being seen: overlapping conversations, judgmental glances, and the slow-motion panic of a young woman (Rachel Sennott, brilliantly frayed) trying to navigate her sugar daddy, ex-girlfriend, and nosy relatives all at once. The cinematography leans into claustrophobia (tight shots, shallow focus, bodies crowding the frame) while the Horror/Thriller score and diegetic sound amplify every cringe-worthy moment until your shoulders are permanently tense. It's the kind of film that leaves you needing to lie down afterwards. Yet for all its stress-inducing precision, Shiva Baby is weirdly enjoyable. Sennott's Danielle is a gloriously messy protagonist (self-centered, insecure, and painfully relatable) and the script mines genuine humour from the absurdity of performative grief and familial expectation. There's no grand plot to speak of; this is a character study stretched taut across 77 minutes of social mortification. But that narrow focus is precisely its strength. Every glance carries weight, every interruption lands like a gut punch, and the film's restraint (no easy outs, no dramatic rescues) feels brutally honest. A sharply observed, brilliantly executed slice of millennial unease. It may not offer narrative fireworks, but as an immersive experience in second-hand embarrassment and quiet desperation, it's captivating.
That closing note about not offering narrative fireworks but delivering something genuinely immersive is, for me, exactly the right way to frame it. I came away from Shiva Baby feeling as though I had been through something, which is not a sensation a 78-minute comedy-drama has any right to produce. Seligman earns every bit of that discomfort honestly, without cheap tricks or easy resolutions, and Sennott gives the kind of performance you find yourself thinking about a few days later when you are not expecting to. A tight, honest, quietly bruising little film. Sometimes less really is more, and sometimes more is just 78 minutes of wanting the floor to open up.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2026-04-02
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Shiva Baby (2020) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: MUBI · MUBI Amazon Channel · Channel 4 Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
