Shiva Baby (2020)
★★★½ — Shiva Baby (2020)
There's a specific kind of dread that comes not from monsters or violence but from being trapped in a room full of people who all know too much about you. Shiva Baby understands that feeling completely, and it weaponises it for 77 minutes of almost unbearable social horror. I walked away needing a lie-down and a quiet room, which is about the highest compliment I can pay a film that, on paper, is just about a young woman attending a Jewish wake.
The shiva of the title is, for the uninitiated, essentially a Jewish wake, a gathering of family and community at a home to mourn and remember. I'll be honest, I wasn't entirely familiar with the ritual going in, but Emma Seligman's debut feature explains nothing and apologises for nothing, and that confidence is infectious. What matters isn't the tradition but the pressure cooker it creates: a crowded suburban house where every corner holds a new humiliation, and where Danielle, played by a brilliantly frayed Rachel Sennott, has to simultaneously manage her sugar daddy, her ex-girlfriend, and a firing squad of relatives all demanding to know what she's doing with her life. The answer, of course, is: not much, and definitely nothing she wants to discuss here.
Seligman shoots the whole thing in tight, shallow-focus close-ups, bodies pressing into the frame from every direction, the camera rarely giving you room to breathe. It's a deliberate, extremely effective choice. You feel the claustrophobia physically. And then there's the score, which belongs in a genuine psychological thriller, all scraping strings and percussive dread, laid over what is ostensibly a comedy of manners. That tension between the mundane social situation and the horror-film treatment is where Shiva Baby does its best work. Every interruption lands like a gut punch. Every loaded glance carries the weight of a full argument. Your shoulders will be up around your ears before the halfway point.
But here's the thing: it's also genuinely funny. Sennott's Danielle is a gloriously messy protagonist. She's self-centred, insecure, reactive, and absolutely awful at hiding any of it, and yet she's completely compelling to watch because she feels so painfully real. The script mines rich humour from the performance of grief, from the absurdity of familial expectation, from the way everyone at a shiva is somehow simultaneously mourning and networking. There's no grand plot to speak of. No twists, no rescues, no neat resolution. It's a character study stretched across a single afternoon of social mortification, and that narrow focus is precisely what makes it work. Every scene earns its place.
Where I hold back from full enthusiasm is in the aftertaste. Shiva Baby is an immersive and impressive experience, but it's also a film that lives almost entirely in sensation. The anxiety is superbly sustained, the craft is sharp, and Sennott is a revelation. But once the credits roll and your shoulders finally drop back to their normal position, there isn't a huge amount left to chew on. It captures millennial unease with precision, yet it stops just short of saying anything especially new about it. That's not a fatal flaw, but it is why I land at three and a half stars rather than reaching for something higher.
Still, as an exercise in controlled, escalating discomfort, it's captivating. Seligman knows exactly what she's doing, and Sennott carries it all with a kind of chaotic, likeable desperation. If you've ever stood at a social gathering wishing the floor would swallow you whole, this film will feel horribly, brilliantly familiar. Just maybe don't watch it before you have to attend any family events of your own.
Three and a half stars.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2026-04-02
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
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · MUBI · MUBI Amazon Channel · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home · Pijama Films
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home
Physical: Amazon US
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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)
