Hell in a house.
Cram enough people into a house together and everyone will be at each other’s throats in no time. You aren’t afforded that luxury however if you’re related/family friends with the rest of them once too many people are sharing the same cubic centimetre of oxygen and the bran starts to reel in claustrophobic agony. I’m so goddamn lucky to say that I don’t have any family, which means I get to skip out on all those painful family gatherings where everyone is poking their nose where it doesn’t belong, quietly passing condescending judgement which rolls down their nose at you like a boulder. I’m of the opinion that there are no people worse than the ones with who you share the same blood with. Makes you want to get a full body blood transfusion, cut off all contact with them and disappear, only to show up on the other side of the planet with a new name and identity.
Have you ever found yourself completely trapped at a party or family gathering from which there is no escape for at least another few hours, and all of a fucking sudden someone arrives who you rather didn’t even exist at all? Shiva Baby (2020) is the cinematic equivalent of constantly running into that person and getting caught in a dreadfully awkward conversation when all you’re trying to do is desperately avoid them. I first discovered Emma Seligman’s anxiety inducing debut, some sort of bizarre mutation of horror and comedy, as a trailer on MUBI’s Instagram a few weeks ago and since then it’s rocketed to the top of my watchlist until I got round to viewing it today with a cold tub of ice cream in my hands. Ice cream which had begun to melt from the nervous tremors the film was making kinetic in me. You’ll find yourself stuck with Danielle at a shiva, a sort of reception/after-party to a funeral in Jewish tradition, where in the midst of her family you’ll have constant run-ins with her ex-girlfriend, her sugar daddy, the sugar daddy’s wife and shrieking infant child, who are roaming around like fleshy awkward bombs. The film chokes up the air with such stifling claustrophobia from the very moment Danielle arrives at the gathering that it takes over you with every moment you spend with her. I found myself begging the script to take her outside for some fresh air before I have to press pause on the film and do it myself.
From when she’s screaming “yes daddy” to when she says “hey daddy” is the only period where the camera can compose itself enough to stay still, from then on out it’s a careening torpedo with a lens strapped to it. Extreme close-ups of people right up in her face as they hungrily probe her about where she’s going in her life, what her prospects are, whether she has a boyfriend – the usual family interrogation script – tower over Danielle as she’s backed into corner and must make a swift exit from the conversation before she falls into the jaws of a panic attack. You’ll notice that Danielle is framed in most conversations she’s arrested in as being trapped from both sides, triangulated from the worst possible angle from which there is no exit. Then there’s the fucking baby which the camera never fails to remind us is there through those slow zooms into its flustered crying face, the kind of creeping slow zooms over which you hear your demented thoughts telling you just what sort of evil things you’d do to that baby to shut it up. It’s tantamount to finding yourself on a plane with a crying, kicking child right behind you for a 7-hour flight. If only the doors weren’t impossible to open mid-flight just so I could fling it out into open expanse of the air and leave gravity to deal with the baby. This reception then devolves into a hellish carnival by way of the cinematography, once Danielle finds out that her phone is left unlocked around the house somewhere, like a ticking time-bomb, waiting for someone to stumble upon it and read all of her secrets that she disguises as baby-sitting to her family. Intense red lights that grow with fury and confusion with a camera that’s barely focused and blearily moving through the crowd to find itself confronted with the contorted, almost caricatured, extreme close-ups of people as they’re talking inane nonsense makes you feel like you’ve walked into 6th circle of hell with a head screaming with acid on a fever, where all your family are waiting for you.
The strange mutation in the films DNA which turns it into a horror is the unsettling, blood-curdling score by Ariel Marx. Every single time Danielle is caught in the sticky web of another awkward conversation, those evil demonic strings start whining with the sensations of a knife being dragged across your throat. It’s painful to the ears and horrid to the mind yet so damn wonderful to behold. Once again, my illimitable odium for infants is sparked once again by the ceaseless wailings of this small human throughout the film, overlayed atop the already recoiling score. At every point in the film, somewhere in the distance you can hear the faint crying of that goddamn baby, until you get right up close to the radioactive source of this annoyance.
The existential dread of being stuck in limbo, having little idea of what you’ll do next in your life and the few things you have going for you slowly losing meaning is evident in Danielle’s expressions which are bought to life by Rachel Sennott’s determined performance. Also being one of only two people of her own generation at a cavalcade of the old guard, her way of life is constantly questioned and belittled by the jaded view of the adults around her, and that frustration is paramount.
I was wonderfully impressed by this film, especially considering it’s her debut feature which packs a dizzying punch. I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground for what she has to show us next because I can already see a style in the making.
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