The Emma Seligman Movies Ranked
Emma Seligman suddenly exploded into my awareness with SHIVA BABY, a movie I found so creatively executed that I figured I must have missed at least a few of her movies before it. As it turned out, I wasn’t sleeping on Seligman, because her breakout feature was also simply her first after generating some buzz with her NYU shorts. The young filmmaker’s just-starting yet applause-worthy career has been a brief joy so far, through all four films (two shorts and two features) Seligman has made in the 7 years since 2016.
#4 — VOID (2016)
Seligman’s first short has some of the qualities one would expect from a “student film,” but on the whole, VOID is a brief yet moving glance into a woman’s porn addiction and college class crush. The relationship between these two things is not explicitly delineated, but the aching angst defining the whole thing, most of which operates like a music video, is compelling. The vague narrative and correspondingly abstract visual of the titular VOID make Seligman’s first short an impressive directorial debut.
#3 — SHIVA BABY (2018)
The SHIVA BABY short, Seligman’s thesis film, was expanded into the feature of the same name. Fittingly, everything here is in that full-length movie, albeit and of course in abbreviated form. The general premise and particular important plot points of the feature are seen in SHIVA BABY (short version), but if it’s lacking anything, it’s the claustrophobic tension the feature impressively foments. Watching this in comparison to the story fleshed out later reveals the “limitations” of the short film form; it’s not like it can’t communicate a great emotional arc, because this short does. But there’s no denying that the first incarnation of SHIVA BABY can’t measure up to Seligman’s features, if one wanted to engage in the kind of reductionism I do every time with these pieces.
#2 — BOTTOMS (2023)
Seligman’s big studio-ish comedy, coming after the director’s biggest gap in any directorial efforts at over three years (a reach of a statistic in so brief a career, to be sure), is one of the most unconventional studio-ish comedies I’ve seen in quite some time. BOTTOMS feeds off the strangeness of teen sex comedies, funneling the tone of the ’80s incarnations of the genre into today’s darkness of revealed misogyny, homophobia, and violence perpetrated by and against children and young adults. But to be clear, the movie isn’t some crusading “comedy” that’s not able to deliver laughs. BOTTOMS is a true satire in an era where that word is thrown around with wild abandon and its tone reflects that. It took me a while to sync up with its bizarro world of violent and sexual frankness and it didn’t always totally work for me. But ultimately, the larger point of BOTTOMS, and maybe more importantly, its surreally over-the-top jokes, make it an impressive departure of a sophomore effort.
#1 — SHIVA BABY (2020)
As fun as BOTTOMS is, Seligman’s greatest achievement thus far in her, I must reiterate, just-beginning career is quite different tonally. I’d say SHIVA BABY, of course in this and future references the feature, is technically a dark comedy, but played for cringing laughs rather than broadness. The film’s almost real-time progression and tight spaces and cinematography palpably fuels the tension of a young woman attending a shiva at the same time as her sugar daddy and his wife and baby. SHIVA BABY’s concept is in an almost classic comedy of errors and misdirection mold updated for a younger millennial/elder Gen Z sensibility and sexual dynamics. It’s one of those delightfully excruciating films that’s a painful joy to watch, and with the emphasis on joy; it’s not one of those impactful movies you wouldn’t want to experience again for whatever reason. SHIVA BABY is one of the great debut features in recent memory, a phenomenal film on its own accord, and Seligman’s gold standard going forward in her exciting career.
