Nanny

The feature directorial debut of Nikyatu Jusu, Nanny follows Aisha (Anna Diop), an undocumented Senegalese immigrant living in New York who is hired by Amy and Adam (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector) to look after their daughter Rose (Rose Decker). Aisha works hard to earn enough money to bring her son Lamine to New York with her, but both Amy and Adam’s volatile home life and a supernatural presence threaten to upend Aisha’s American Dream.

Nanny is a very interesting horror film: while its story contains elements of the supernatural, with familiar cinematography and sound mixing to instil feelings of dread, the film’s writing and structure don’t put as much of a focus on these more conventional trappings of the genre. Rather, the horror of Nanny is largely in the mundane – the movie’s monster isn’t a demon or spirit as much as it is the spectres of racism and capitalism, or the myth of the American Dream, with the more supernatural parts of the movie’s storytelling serving to highlight the inherent horror of a world we accept as ordinary.

This isn’t to say that Nanny doesn’t do a good job with its more traditional scares – quite the opposite, they’re shot and framed very well, with the piece’s careful use of colour being a particular highlight – the film just doesn’t put its full narrative weight behind these scenes, instead using them to accentuate and expose the more unsettling parts of everyday life as a marginalised person. This is a bold creative decision, but one that pays off in several fascinating ways, encouraging its audience to pay closer attention to the character dynamics at play and the societal mechanisms that drive them.

As the title suggests, Nanny’s storytelling focuses primarily on Aisha’s character journey, and Diop does a fantastic job at portraying the compelling and complicated character at the heart of the piece’s narrative, bringing out the best in her co-stars in the process. Her multi-faceted performance is a highlight of the piece, carrying the important emotional beats and ensuring the movie’s unconventional structure and distinctive style work as well as they possibly can.

Overall, Nanny is an ambitious directorial debut for Jusu, but also a very promising one. Effortlessly balancing intelligent character work, incisive social commentary and surreal, scary visuals, Nanny is a harrowing tale of love and loss that is sure to stick with audiences for a long time.

Umar Ali

Nanny is released on Amazon Prime Video on 16^th December 2022.

Watch the trailer for Nanny here: