Shiva Baby

Danielle at the buffet

Shiva Baby is a failure-to-launch comedy of aspirational anxiety and adds writer/director Emma Seligman’s name to the list of 1980s-born New York(ish) women working the seam – Lena Dunham, Greta Gerwig and Desiree Akhavan. Seligman adds her own distinctive twist, though, a genre switcheroo as screwball comedy morphs into something darker and tenser, an almost Hitchcock-y vibe emerging as main focus Danielle (Rachel Sennott) works herself into terrible situations entirely of her own making. What’s more impressive is that the action takes place all on one set, inside the house where a shiva (the Jewish wake/mourning period) is taking place after the death of someone – the obligated Danielle isn’t actually sure who – … Read more