Shiva Baby (2020)
★★★½ — Shiva Baby (2020)
Emma Seligman expanded her own 2018 short film of the same name into this feature debut, shot on a reported budget of around $250,000 over just eight days in Toronto. Seligman was still a film student at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts when she made the original short, and the feature arrived via a cluster of small independent production companies before distributor Kino Lorber picked it up. Rachel Sennott, who had appeared in the short, carried the lead role across into the feature, and the film became something of a breakthrough for both her and Seligman. Released during the Covid-affected 2020 festival circuit (it premiered at SXSW before the festival was cancelled, then screened virtually), it found its audience through streaming and word of mouth rather than a conventional theatrical run.
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.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2026-04-02
Where to watch (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
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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)
