Shiva Baby: An Epic Post Grad Anxiety Spiral Served with a Side of Bisexual Panic
Written by Silvana Smith
Graphics by Jasmine Flora
One day, one event, multiple nervous breakdowns. Shiva Baby, directed by Emma Seligman, is the cringe comedy that feels more like a psychological thriller plagued by social fears and anxieties instead of jump scares and murder.
The new indie film follows Danielle; a young, Jewish, soon-to-be-post-grad who goes home to attend a family shiva (a Jewish funeral service) and unexpectedly runs into her sugar daddy and ex-girlfriend, Maya. A 77 minute long pressure cooker of nosey relatives, uncomfortable small talk, and awkward situations, the film toes the line between humor and horror, and explores a young woman's downward spiral as she navigates a house full of people she’s desperately trying to avoid.
A collision crash course of societal and family pressures, conflicting identities, and sexual tension, Danielle is the epitome of a chaotic neutral bisexual girl as she struggles to find her footing as a young woman. Up against the neverending internal conflict of the persona she tries to portray versus her underlying insecurities, she tries to reconcile the expectations of being a good Jewish girl with her desire to be an empowered grown woman; simultaneously failing at both in the process. And what’s a better place to try and hide your chaotic interior world than a house full of prying adults?
When we first meet Danielle, she is seemingly in a position of power; meeting one of her sugar daddy clients, Max, and earning money. However, very quickly that illusion is broken once she meets up with her family at a Shiva right after (where she may or may not even know who died). Once the first thread of Danielle’s tightly wound psyche is pulled, it isn’t long until she slowly unravels, losing any sense of control she thought she had over how she is seen.
Despite her best efforts, each interaction at the event seems to leave her feeling more powerless than before. She’s constantly being infantilized by her parents, she bumps into her ex who is seemingly more successful than her in every way, none of her relatives seem to understand why she’s not going to law school, and to top it off her sugar daddy shows up unexpectedly with a beautiful wife and baby he failed to mention he had. Each dynamic proves to undermine her and highlight all her insecurities; her career, education, body image, relationship status. Trapped by all these shortcomings and unresolved tension, she spends the whole event desperately trying to regain any sense of power she thought she had.
With each awkward conversation, you can see her ability to keep herself together breaking through erratic eating behavior and desperate attempts at power plays that backfire and dig her deeper into her anxiety spiral. The constant power shifts and cycles of tension building and breaking keep you on edge about whether or not her sugar baby secret will come out as you can tell the wife is slowly catching on. Each line of questioning or claustrophobic moment is heightened by the sharp string music score and a crying baby that truly brings the film into horror movie territory. The audience is kept waiting to see how far her threshold for chaos and tension is, one cringey conversation after another.
Still, Danielle clings to saving face; pushing all vulnerability and guilt down under the surface. All these fears at play, her multilayered existential crisis continues to bubble underneath the surface until finally, she snaps. All the anxiety and stress comes to a head in a final moment where Danielle breaks, both figuratively and literally. After accidentally shattering a glass vase along with any persona she was trying to portray, she can't keep it together anymore and breaks down in front of everyone finally confessing she has no idea what she’s doing. It isn’t until she shares this vulnerability that she is finally met with understanding and is able to connect with her mother and her ex-girlfriend. At her lowest, Danielle gets the validation and affection she needs, not through asserting power over people but by being vulnerable; proving the only way out of an anxiety spiral is through it.
By the end, the whole cast is squeezed into a van filled with literally everyone and their uncle, crying baby and all, in order to get home. The claustrophobic tension is palpable but bearable as Maya slips her hand into Danielle’s; her smile at the end lets us know she’s accepted the chaos.
Originally a short student film written and directed by Emily Seligman in 2018, the film is also a testament to the influence of new female creative voices in the industry with women both in front and behind the camera. Inspired by the pressures Seligman felt at the time, the film offers both bisexual and jewish representation many stories lack. Featuring multiple generations of fully fleshed out female characters, Shiva Baby gives power to both women creators and women’s stories. Whether you’re a Jewish, bisexual, sugar baby or not, every young person can resonate with the vulnerabilities, pressures, and anxieties of a modern graduate, all of which are played out spectacularly in this film. A heartfelt chaotic disaster for the ages, Shiva Baby is bound to make anyone who doesn’t have their life together feel seen.