Shiva Baby - Movie Review

Critic Score - 7 of 10

General Audience Score - 7 of 10

Shiva Baby is another fabulous writing and directorial debut by a young female, Emma Seligman. This film’s primary objective is to make you squirm, much in the same way as a comedy like Eighth Grade does or a more serious film like The Gift (2015). The cringing will have you tense like someone is dragging their nails across a blackboard for an hour and 20 minutes. Does that mean you'll have a good time?

PROS - Shiva Baby introduces us to Danielle, a young Jewish woman acted by Rachel Sennott, who among a group of very talented actors, is doing some really good work. When some serious crap starts hitting the fan while attending a shiva, a Jewish funeral of sorts, the facial expressions Danielle uses, glances, looks of desperation and utter shock and horror bring the experiences to life. The uncomfortable situations the movie presents are undone regularly by the dark comedy the film is aiming for, which it’s fairly effective at accomplishing.

The score of the film also works brilliantly at adding layers to the stress the film has already set up. The violin creaks and moans at us in the same way a horror film does that causes tension to build up in the shoulders just listening to the soundtrack. Next time you’re driving alone at dark cue it up and see. The screenwriting and dialogue are also both solid and assist the acting and score to make this an excellent first effort at filmmaking for this newcomer writer/director. How far do all these things carry the film?

CONS - Despite the dark comedy genre this film would fall into, I didn’t find it overwhelmingly hilarious. It definitely had its moments of humor being juxtaposed by the anxiety inducing tense situations. But I never found myself laughing out loud, more like smiling in amusement or shaking my head in disbelief. But not being Jewish myself, I can certainly see this film hitting closer to home in its attempts at humor with people that may closer identify with more of the family characters’ personality traits.

But the films runtime was also a bit of a conundrum for me. On the one hand it was nice to have a film literally fly by while sustaining high levels of drama and tension almost the entire time. But coming in under an hour and twenty minutes, this highly entertaining film feels like there was some more film left on the table. Maybe some character work that could’ve fleshed out some of the dynamics further or groundwork laid that made the actual shiva into more of a final act and possibly feel like more of a complete movie. But judging the film solely on what it brings to the table and not what it could’ve done differently, I skill skew heavily towards the positive overall.

SUMMARY - This film was a very solid 7 for me, I was going to give it an 8, but I felt it was just a step or 2 behind some other films of its type that hit 8 for me. I can see this film growing in my estimation after repeated viewings. But with such a tight runtime, it’s an easy squeeze into your schedule. Take a chance and find out for yourself just how fun and crazy a time this Shiva is Baby.