Work Warning – Some sexual content and language throughout, most of it right at the start.

Shiva Baby (2018) dir. Emma Seligman

Another short-turned-feature, as writer/director Emma Seligman expanded on this film for a feature-length version of the same title, retaining star Rachel Sennott as Danielle and squirmy horror as the milieu. Padding the premise of a short, especially one so deliciously self-contained as this one, is a tough act. But Seligman’s additions to the long version carry the added hour so that the feature runs as smooth and light as its predecessor. 

The short neatly leaves Danielle in less of a wacky conundrum and more of an awkward contemplation of her place in life and the room, the unspeakable sexual being, surrounded by religious tradition, contrasted with the openly acknowledged gentile wife carrying her child. Danielle has nowhere to escape the persistent cry. Max, the sugar daddy, gets to have it both ways.

As befits adding an extra hour, the feature has more incident as Danielle tries to keep her day from going off the rails (unsurprising  that Seligman found inspiration in another family-gather-as-horror-movie Krisha), but the changes successfully grow from the instincts that led the short to its final moment. A key addition is Molly Gordon as Maya, a former girlfriend of Danielle’s, a relationship also kept hidden from her parents, so Danielle has multiple secret lives to keep compartmentalized. The sugar daddy’s wife doesn’t just represent a domestic contrast, she’s an entrepreneur – one that may have the right connections to kickstart a career for Danielle, too. Complicating this further, Danielle’s ambitions for her education and vary according to which who she’s told them to.

None of this detail from Shiva Baby is included in “Shiva Baby,” yet none of it contradicts Danielle’s tense expression that closes the film. The feature-length comedy is a gem, but it’s also nice to see a short that can walk away at just the right time.