Shiva Baby has a comic claustrophobia that almost makes you choke, so intense is its depiction of familial/traditional walls closing in on its main character. Danielle (Rachel Sennott), on the eve of graduating from college, attends a Jewish funeral with her parents (Fred Melamed and Polly Draper), where questions about her studies, her job prospects, her dating status, her eating habits, and her weight corner her no matter what room she flees to. And that’s all before the older man she’s sleeping with (partly for money, the brief opening scene implies) makes a surprise appearance with his wife and baby. Writer-director Emma Seligman employs a tight camera and oppressive sound design—as well as the plucked strings and clicking percussion of Ariel Marx’s score—in a way that’s more akin to horror, yet this is always funny as well. (There are some great one-liners in the side conversations continually seeping into Danielle’s ears.) Sennott, who also starred in the short on which this is based, walks this comic-horror line perfectly. She gives Danielle a bristling energy that elicits laughs, while also capturing the crippling distress of a young woman who is deeply unsure of her place in the world at the exact moment everyone expects her to have her life figured out.
