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‘nanny’: film review | sundance 2022.

Nikyatu Jusu's debut feature revolves around a Senegalese woman working as a nanny for a wealthy New York couple and haunted by frightening visions.

By Jourdain Searles

Jourdain Searles

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The horror of the immigrant experience is often portrayed quite literally in American cinema — realistic, shaky camera movements; stark, muted colors; sad, tired people with their eyes wide, speaking only sparingly as they take all the abuse capitalism has to offer. The directors who traffic in these stories often do so from a place of detachment, able to register the suffering of their subjects while ignoring the many layers of their humanity.

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Venue: Sundance Film Festival (U.S. Dramatic Competition) Cast: Anna Diop, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Spector, Sinqua Walls, Rose Decker, Leslie Uggams Writer-director: Nikyatu Jusu

The film tells the story of Aisha (Anna Diop), a Senegalese nanny for Rose (Rose Decker), the daughter of a wealthy white New York couple with a strained marriage. Amy (Michelle Monaghan) is the prototypical upper-crust working mom whose control issues and general anxiety make it difficult for Aisha to do her job. When Rose refuses to eat the bland, hermetically sealed health food her mother leaves for her, Aisha begins feeding her jollof rice on the sly, knowing that Amy would never allow it. Though her husband Adam (Morgan Spector) is around, it’s Amy who calls the shots, demanding every moment of Aisha’s time as well as emotional support. Adam lives up to her disdain, disappearing frequently and only showing interest in Rose when given the opportunity to flirt with Aisha. Worn out from her job and fed up with Adam, Amy can’t even seem to manage paying Aisha on time. 

There are moments early in the film where it seems as though the focus will be Aisha’s relationship with the white couple, but Jusu frames them as intruders in Aisha’s life, distracting her from her own needs and desires. Aisha needs to get paid on time, not just for rent, but mainly to save money in anticipation for her young son Lamine’s arrival to the country. In the meantime, he’s staying with her family, with only phone calls and video chats connecting them between continents. She’s a mother on a mission, and her job as nanny is only a means to an end.

It’s refreshing to see Aisha repeatedly establish boundaries between herself and the troubled couple, refusing to fall prey to the artificial trappings of their lifestyle. She can see their misery and the emptiness of their marriage very clearly, even in the midst of her own emotional turmoil. She only yearns for what is hers — her son, whom she refers to as her “greatest work.”

With the company of other West African immigrants and a new love Malik (Sinqua Walls), Aisha tries to stay rooted in her culture and take steps toward the life she wants. As Malik, Walls is charming and easy-going; we see Aisha beginning to relax and enjoy her time in the city. Diop and Walls have lovely chemistry, but the film’s most impactful connection is between her and veteran actress Leslie Uggams, who plays Malik’s grandmother Kathleen. As Aisha begins to have visions, disrupting both her sleep and waking hours, Kathleen uses her spiritual intuition to help the protagonist understand what they mean. Two figures from West African folklore, the trickster Anansi and the water spirit Mami Wata, take over her mind, slowly eroding her sanity. Aisha begins to see spiders — Anansi’s most popular form — often accompanied by her mind playing tricks on her, distorting moments of her reality. Mami Wata is much more direct, pulling Aisha underwater and making her feel as if she’s drowning. But despite the violence of their methods, Kathleen asserts that they are simply trying to send a message — a message that will likely have a devastating effect on the young mother’s life.

With Nanny , Jusu crafts a contemplative, thematically rich story that deftly explores the emotional and spiritual costs of leaving your homeland behind for an uncertain future in a strange land. Diop is elegant and understated as Aisha, a loving mother with quiet strength, commanding presence and an unbreakable bond to Senegal and the conditions that made her. It’s a perfect marriage of director and star, with Jusu providing a worthy showcase for Diop’s talents as a leading lady.

The film’s skilled usage of folklore is an inspired breath of fresh air in a horror landscape so often uninterested in the African diaspora. Mami Wata is an especially dazzling image, regal, sensual and foreboding all at once. At its root, Nanny is a story about the otherworldly power of cultural connection and the ways it may guide you when you’ve lost your way.

Full credits

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (U.S. Dramatic Competition) Cast: Anna Diop, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Spector, Sinqua Walls, Rose Decker, Leslie Uggams Director/ Writer: Nikyatu Jusu Producers: Nikkia Moulterie, Daniela Taplin Lundberg Executive producers: Maria Zuckerman, Ryan Heller, Michael Bloom, Rebecca Cammarata, Nnamdi Asomugha, Bill Benenson, Laurie Benenson, Grace Lee, Sumalee Montano, Nikyatu Jusu Co-producers: Ged Dickersin, Kim Coleman Associate producer: Vanessa Mendal Director of photography: Rina Yang Costume designer: Charlese Antoinette Jones Production Designer: Jonathan Guggenheim Editor: Robert Mead Music by: Tanerelle Bartek Music supervising: Barry Cole Casting: Kim Coleman

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Nanny review – promising domestic worker thriller gets jumbled

A Senegalese immigrant nanny battles micro-aggressions and otherworldly forces in a novel yet loosely assembled debut

I t’s remarkable how infrequently modern-day domestic workers are portrayed as fully formed characters in TV and film, given their ubiquity and necessity in the lives of so many. Perhaps part of that is because “the help” isn’t meant to be noticed (the flamboyant Fran Fine notwithstanding) or that the lives of low-wage people of color, many of whom are immigrants , haven’t traditionally piqued the interest of privileged Hollywood. When domestic workers do see screen time, it’s often through the gaze of the privileged .

Enter film-maker ​​Nikyatu Jusu, whose mother, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, had been a domestic worker. Raised in Atlanta, the young Jusu watched her parent “put her dreams to the side to be a peripheral mother in other mothers’ narratives”.

That experience deeply informs Jusu’s feature film debut, Nanny, a supernatural thriller that tells the story of Aisha (Anna Diop), a Senegalese immigrant nanny in New York City who works for an upper-middle-class white family while saving up to bring her own young son to the United States. As she is drawn deeper into the family’s lives, however, she contends with forces both otherworldly and real that threaten her American dream.

Jusu infuses the film with rich details that give fresh insight into the immigrant-nanny experience: the glances exchanged with the pregnant housecleaner, the jokes on a park bench shared with fellow immigrant nannies, a tight smile from the parents’ privileged Black friend, the Tupperware meals of jollof rice, which becomes a pivotal plot point when the young daughter takes a liking to the west African staple to the chagrin of her mother, who would prefer that her child eat sterile, pre-prepped bland foods.

That’s one of many micro-aggressions, given that Aisha’s employers are Well-Meaning White Liberals: the stressy mother and aspiring girlboss (Michelle Monaghan) awkwardly attempts to bond with Aisha over being a woman in a boys-club workplace (“you know what that’s like”), while the father, a third-world/conflict photojournalist with a roving eye (Morgan Spector), claims to be doing what he can to make up for Aisha’s weeks of backpay but ends up deflecting nearly all domestic responsibility.

But these aren’t mere one-dimensional caricatures, and ultimately they’re not the only malignant forces at work in the film. The African folk figures of Mami Wata, a seductive yet dangerous water spirit, and the wise trickster spider Anansi factor in as symbols of survival and resistance for oppressed people, and their eerie depictions help Nanny stand out from the genre’s typical fare.

All this results in a film that teems with tremendously promising parts that manage to hold your attention for much of the film’s 97 minutes – but Nanny, as a whole, packs a rather toothless punch. It feels loosely assembled – chock-full of original ideas, intriguing imagery and plot devices, many of which either oddly wind up as loose ends or get resolved in a hurry. Meanwhile, despite frequent references to the many menaces that surround Aisha’s existence in her new country – the HAL 9000-like red-lit nanny cam; the surveillance-camera-style footage that shows her entering the luxury-apartment elevator; the exploitation of developing-world violence by developed-world news media; a relative’s joke voicemail greeting that becomes less funny and more ominous with each encounter; her employers’ constant denial of her agency, through their inconsiderate, half-baked demands and odd inability to come up with enough cash – the film stumbles in building tension and constructing suspense.

There’s certainly a lot going on, and it contributes to the slide from confusion to terror. At the same time, it’s perhaps a missed opportunity to explore some of the very real exploitation and abuse that domestic workers in the United States regularly face. Jusu brings a novel perspective, especially as a film-maker interested in translating the all-too-real injustices of American history and society into genre films (her 2019 short, Suicide by Sunlight, featured a Black vampire trying to regain custody of her daughters). Fortunately for her, there’s no shortage of horror stories here to mine.

Nanny is showing at the Sundance film festival with a release date to be announced

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‘Nanny’ Review: A New Job That Swallows Her Life

Nikyatu Jusu’s new film, about a Senegalese woman who works as a babysitter in New York, plays like an immigration drama and a cruel labor farce.

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By Manohla Dargis

There’s a brief, flawlessly calibrated scene early in “Nanny” when the title character first sees the room where she is to sleep. Recently arrived in New York from Senegal, she has been hired by a white family as a babysitter. As the mother of the family guides her through the bright, spacious apartment, the nanny seems excited about her new position until she sees the small, dim room where she’ll sleep some late evenings. “It’s nothing fancy,” the employer says, clearly believing otherwise, as the nanny’s smile fades in the gray, cheerless light.

The nanny, Aisha (a lovely Anna Diop), graciously recovers her poise, despite the mother’s brittle exuberance and tensely coiled physicality. By the time this uncomfortable woman, Amy (Michelle Monaghan), asks if she can hug Aisha — after leaving her a binder filled with schedules and numbers and a fridge crammed with prepared meals — an absurd, uneasy world of privilege and its discontents has opened up, spilling its secrets. They’ll continue to spill throughout “Nanny,” which follows Aisha as she attempts to navigate her new life while holding fast to her former one and the beloved young son she left behind.

With swathes of vibrant color and a steady pulse, the writer-director Nikyatu Jusu, making her feature debut, briskly sketches in Aisha’s world with pinpoint detail, naturalistic performances and sly jolts of sardonic humor. Everything flows with unforced realism, or would, if it weren’t for the steadily mounting unease that tugs at the edge of the frame soon after Aisha begins working for the family, creating slight disturbances in the air. These ripples are almost unnoticeable at first, though even when they start to engulf Aisha, it’s unclear whether they’re emanating from deep within her or from outside malevolent forces.

It takes a while to get a read on what Jusu is up to. The story’s premise and some of its sharply observed details — totemic art work, an uninvited kiss — initially suggest that she is riffing on “ Black Girl ,” the Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène’s 1966 masterpiece about an African woman’s tragic death while working for a racist family in France. Yet despite the similarities between her movie and the Sembène film, Jusu is engaging with questions of power in a specific cultural context in which, among other things, white racial tolerance has become a kind of mask that ostensibly enlightened white people don only when it suits them, when they need to demonstrate racial sensitivity or need something from Black people.

Amid flourishes of discordant music and strange goings-on — a bump in the night, a mysteriously running shower — Aisha settles into her new routine. She quickly bonds with her charge, a sweet child (Rose Decker) with whom she speaks French. The family is paying for a babysitter and getting a language tutor for free, though, as Aisha tells Amy’s husband (Morgan Spector) with mounting bitterness, his wife has a terrible habit of not paying her. Aisha also begins seeing a man, Malik (Sinqua Walls), who also has a son and a grandmother (Leslie Uggams!), who ominously invokes an African spirit called Mami Wata.

Jusu draws fluidly from different genres and modes in “Nanny” — from scene to scene, the movie plays like an immigration drama, a lonely woman melodrama and a cruel labor farce — but at one point you realize that what you are watching looks, sounds and feels like a horror movie. It is, though its frights tend to be more intellectual than visceral, and here water gushes instead of blood. Yet even as Jusu layers on the shadows and revs up the shocks, she avoids formula by drawing on African storytelling traditions: As Aisha watches, wonders and struggles with her fate, Jusu sends a trickster up a wall and a malign spirit into the deep.

Diop’s delicate, fine-tuned performance works harmoniously with movie’s shape-shifting and with the other actors, especially Monaghan’s more full-bodied, quietly violent turn. Monaghan’s performance occasionally teeters on parody when the character seems on the verge of a breakdown or when Jusu’s dialogue hits her point a little too forcefully. For the most part, though, the tonally discrete performances carve out two powerfully distinct narrative spaces for these characters, one who fades into irrelevancy as Aisha battles and endures, finding a place in a world in a movie from a filmmaker who’s already found hers.

Nanny Rated R for ominous images and brief nudity. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic of The Times since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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Review: Nikyatu Jusu’s ‘Nanny’ artfully centers an immigrant’s terror in a palpable nightmare

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In writer-director Nikyatu Jusu’s pungent, psychologically unnerving “Nanny,” the title describes a suffocating swirl of demanding job, racialized identity and terror trap for Aisha (Anna Diop), a Senegalese immigrant and single mother trying to make a life for herself in New York.

Jusu’s fantastically self-assured debut feature , which garnered her a Sundance jury prize this year, refreshingly approaches horror more as a dramatic prism than a genre template. There’s no “The” in the title for a reason (aside from the fact that it’s not a cheesy caretaker-gone-bad date-night frightfest): In her elegantly unsettling portrait of an invisible woman straddling two notions of home — far from what she’s known, working inside a perilous system — Jusu is letting us know she’s got all diasporic women employed by wealthy families on her mind. And that their fears can easily become nightmares.

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It’s a vibe she establishes right away with her moody opening image: our protagonist’s peaceful slumber accompanied by water sounds, then a gathering dissonance, and finally, most disturbingly, a spider crawling into her mouth. When we get to waking reality, we meet Aisha on the morning she’s about to start a new job caring for the daughter of a privileged, busy white couple, Amy ( Michelle Monaghan ) and Adam (Morgan Spector), who live in a sleekly modern high-rise apartment and lead busy, distracted lives.

Nikyatu Jusu’s ‘Nanny’ contains a ‘hard lesson.’ She’s learned one about Hollywood too

Jusu spoke to The Times about her Sundance prizewinner, the kaleidoscopic nature of Blackness and executives paid ‘not to watch foreign cinema.’

Nov. 14, 2022

Aisha has a child too, a boy named Lamine, but he’s a continent away — for now only a figure on video chat, a source of hope and a reminder of her crushing loneliness as she establishes a quick bond with her charge, Rose (Rose Decker). The goal is to earn enough to bring Lamine to New York, if only the controlling, career-driven, and emotionally needy Amy — edgily played by Monaghan — could remember to pay Aisha on time, and what she’s owed. Adam is kinder, but his interactions with Aisha are no less awkward for seeming ulterior. On top of the stress of navigating her employers’ tension-filled domestic situation, however, Aisha finds her consciousness being invaded by dark forces who spark dreams of suffocation and drowning, or episodes of hallucinatory danger.

As intensive and worrisome as Aisha’s hauntings are — artfully handled with subtle visual shifts, sly edits and oozing audio cues — Jusu doesn’t present them as sensationalistic high points or showpieces of victimization. Their horror is in their seeming to just exist as part of the fabric of Aisha’s life alongside the microaggressions at her job and the off-work moments of peace and positivity when she can visit a fellow immigrant friend or start a budding romance (with Sinqua Walls’ appealing doorman Malik).

Aisha is the three-dimensional hero of Jusu’s narrative, after all, not its prey, which is where “Nanny” distinguishes itself in a trope-filled genre, never more so than when Malik’s keenly observant grandmother (Leslie Uggams) shows up — like a well-rooted tree bearing fruit for a weary traveler — to inform Aisha (and us) about these supernatural interlopers warping her reality: one a trickster, the other a water spirit, both figures from West African folklore who can zero in on inner turmoil. With that scene, we understand why “Nanny” feels so different from other movies centering trauma in the marginalized: The need to process Aisha’s anxiety is as much on this movie’s mind as giving her terrors cinematic power (through some top-notch sound design and Ian Takahashi’s evocative underwater cinematography).

With Diop’s anchoring portrayal intertwining buoyancy and ache, “Nanny” gets to stand out as a character study, one of brightness beset by malevolence, and perhaps strengthened by it. Though Jusu doesn’t quite stick the landing — there’s a wallop at the end that isn’t dealt with as emotionally as you might need it to be — it’s still a work of compassion and unease heralding a thoughtful, genre-probing talent.

'Nanny'

Rated: R, for some language and brief sexuality/nudity Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes Playing: Starts Nov. 23, Regal LA Live, downtown Los Angeles; available Dec. 16 on Prime Video

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Nanny Review and Ending Explained – Nikyatu Jusu’s Debut is Anchored by Good Visual Storytelling and a Strong Anna Diop

For a lot of people, the American dream is an idea that is as relevant now as it was almost one hundred years ago. Built on the concept of freedom and prosperity, this idea is what draws many people from other countries to America in hopes of a new life. However, for most of the people with this plan, upon arrival, they realize that the American dream isn’t quite what they might have expected, and in some cases, it is more of an American nightmare.

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Nanny review and plot summary, nanny is a great directorial debut by nikyatu jusu.

• Nanny Ending Explained - What Happens to Aisha?

This is the case for Aisha (Anna Diop) who left Senegal in hopes of a better life. She is trying to save up just enough money to be able to bring her son to America from Senegal and takes on a nanny job for a wealthy white couple, Amy (Michelle Monaghan) and Adam (Morgan Spector), to look after their daughter Rose (Rose Decker). Throughout the film, Aisha has visions that haunt her wherever she goes.

Clearly inspired by Ousmane Sembene’s masterpiece Black Girl , Aisha follows a similar path in this movie. She is an immigrant, which is something Adam embraces as he makes a living off black culture, more specifically photographing black activists — when he first is introduced to the film he mentions that he was in France covering a police brutality rally.

However, it is something that Amy clearly rejects: she tries to put Aisha in “high class” clothing, she scolds Aisha for feeding her daughter jollof rice, and she refuses to pay her what she is owed because she knows there isn’t much Aisha can do about it.

This is where Anna Diop, who is best known for her role as Starfire on HBO Max ‘s  Titans , truly excels. Aisha knows her worth and isn’t afraid to ask for it — she corrects Amy multiple times when it comes to the rate they discussed — and the confidence she has in herself and her situation shines through when Aisha needs it to.

However, the great part of Diop’s performance is displaying the toll that this life is taking on her as well. Aisha is a motherly figure to Rose, even more of a motherly figure than Amy is, but has to sacrifice being a mom to her own son Lamine, who is about to celebrate his seventh birthday.

Rose gets the cooking, the stories, and the playtime, and Lamine is stuck only to a few fleeting moments on the phone. This tears at Aisha, and seeing the longing that Diop gives this character allows you to understand where her confidence in difficult situations comes from.

In her feature directorial debut, Nikyatu Jusu, who also writes the script, is visually and symbolically potent. The visions Aisha has are disturbing, but they are a window into how she feels being in this situation, how she feels trapped in this world, constantly hoping for the best but ultimately drowning in it. It’s a true visual achievement that shows great promise for Jusu’s future as a writer/director.

As the end of this movie comes around, some choices are made, and not all of them work. Some of the same elements that excelled in the front half can become a bit repetitive, but where this story eventually goes does end on an emotional one. Aisha is having to live with the decision that she made that she ultimately thought was best, and the consequences that came from it.

Nikyata Jusu’s film debut, Nanny , is anchored by good visual storytelling and a strong Anna Diop. The American Dream is a beacon of hope for so many people, but as the beacon gets closer a true nightmare ensues.

Nanny Ending Explained – What Happens to Aisha?

Nanny (Credit – Amazon Prime Video)

Throughout the film, Aisha has many different visions which cause her to see things that aren’t really there. After one of these spells, Aisha almost kills Rose in the bathtub. Luckily, she is brought back right before, drops the knife, and takes Rose to bed.

Aisha apologizes to Rose, to which Rose tells her that her son Lamine caused her to do it out of jealousy. Aisha asks Rose why she would say that, and Rose turns over, not saying another word to her.

As we know throughout the film, Lamine, who is about to turn seven, is still living in Senegal and Aisha is trying to save up the money to be able to bring her son to America. She hasn’t seen her son in quite some time, but her maternal instincts never left her as she treats Rose in a motherly way, something that Lamine is missing out on.

She is personal with Rose, feeding her African dishes and telling her African folk stories, and her relationship with Lamine has devolved into phone calls and messages.

When she finally is paid the money she is owed for working overtime, she has enough to bring her son and her Aunt to America, but while waiting for them at the airport, neither of them steps off the plane.

After a few moments, Aisha calls her Aunt and finds her alone, without Lamine. Her Aunt goes on to tell Aisha how Lamine was at the beach and got trapped under the waves, eventually drowning.  Riddled with grief, the end of this movie finds Aisha on the docks at a river in New York right before she jumps in and starts to drown, only to be rescued right before death.

Water symbolism can be found all throughout this film. Whether it is Aisha drowning in her work or in her personal life, she is constantly gasping for air hoping to breathe. When she jumps in the water, it seems as though it is an attempt to drown herself and let the pain and pressure of everything that has happened to her fully engulf her, but it also could just be a way to feel what her son had to endure without her.

Over the course of the film, she spent time looking after someone else’s kid and not her own in hopes that one day she would be able to have her son back. As she is in the water she looks up and sees a vision of Lamine. A mermaid that has been seen throughout the film in a menacing light is now fully realized.

This mermaid was never trying to hurt Aisha, but instead was serving as a warning. In this sequence, the mermaid helps Aisha to the surface which raises the question of whether is she still warning Aisha or is she actually the menacing creature she seems to be and is guiding Aisha to further doom.

While she may still be alive, this is not a happy ending for her as even though she lives and now has a chance with Malik and his son, the presence of Lamine and the mother she couldn’t be for him will always hang over; this is the cost of the American dream.

How the hope one carries can be completely stripped away in an instant, and there is nothing one can do about it. She tried to be the best mom she could for Lamine, and even if she truly believed this was the best way for him to have a better life, the price she had to pay for this sliver of hope is what will ultimately cause her a lifetime of grief.

What did you think of Nanny (2022)? Comment below.

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Article by Jacob Throneberry

Jacob Throneberry joined Ready Steady Cut in February 2022 and is a member of the NC Film Critics and NA Film Critic Associations. Jacob is also a graduating student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington doing a Master’s Program in Film Studies. He has applied his main hobby to building a career, becoming a trusted film critic and writer.

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Movie Reviews

'nanny' employs african folklore in a haunting black horror film.

Pilar Galvan

Anna Diop plays a Senegalese immigrant pursuing the American Dream in Nanny. Courtesy of Prime Video hide caption

Anna Diop plays a Senegalese immigrant pursuing the American Dream in Nanny.

There's something in the water in the new film Nanny . Over two unsettling hours, director Nikyatu Jusu submerges the audience in suffocating night terrors, blending glowing reflections of Black love with discomforting glances amongst kin. The film is an experience for the senses; you'll hold your breath as you're consumed.

Code Switch

'get out' sprang from an effort to master fear, says director jordan peele.

While recent films in the Black horror genre have presented the terrifying realities of being Black in America, Nanny is rooted in the specific experience of the African diaspora. Black horror films often subvert systems of oppression but they also often employ Western devices and narratives. In films like Master , Get Out and Candyman , the horror device is the predominantly white institution or neighborhood – which has implications on the Black character's sense of self and being. In Nanny, the white domestic space is the setting, but the tensions are manifested through African folklore.

Anna Diop stars as Aisha in Nanny. Courtesy of Prime Video hide caption

Anna Diop stars as Aisha in Nanny.

Maternal instinct and sacrifice

Aisha (Anna Diop) is a Senegalese immigrant pursuing the American Dream in an attempt to give her son Lamine (Jahleel Kamara), who is still in Senegal, a better life. When she is hired as a nanny for a wealthy white family in Manhattan, she constantly feels the weight of her own maternal sacrifice.

Maternal instinct and intuition are Aisha's power even as she uses those instincts with the child, Rose (Rose Decker). Aisha allows Rose to eat her Jollof rice when she refuses to eat anything else, reads her folk bedtime stories like Anansi the Spider , and shields her from the realities of her parents' relationship. The film reflects the centuries-long tradition of Black women taking care of white children as "the help," and also reveals the contemporary African immigrant experience in which this imbalance continues.

Michelle Monaghan plays an affluent mother with a volatile home life. Courtesy of Prime Video hide caption

Michelle Monaghan plays an affluent mother with a volatile home life.

As a child of Sierra Leonean immigrants to the U.S., director Nikyatu Jusu teases out the experience of being a Black immigrant in all its tiring and traumatic layers. There are tense confrontations between Aisha and Amy (Michelle Monaghan), her employer, who faces her own personal turmoil as a mother and woman. Aisha spends sleepless nights in a harrowing guest bedroom.

The scenes are deep and saturated in dark tones. The film's visual language is disorienting by design. Hauntingly beautiful forms materialize to suggest the experience of being submerged in a body of water; the audience is immersed in Tanerelle's delicately blended aquatic soundscape. Sonic echoes, running showers, and beach waves are layered with both Aisha's dreams and her reality. Aisha is shown drowning in her night terrors, which is paralleled with a sense of her displacement in the waking world.

Anna Diop in Nanny Courtesy of Prime Video hide caption

Anna Diop in Nanny

Summoning Mami Wata, the water spirit

Aisha has a magnetic connection with Malik, the charming doorman of the building, played by Sinqua Walls. She is introduced to Malik's grandmother Kathleen (Leslie Uggams) with whom he is close and who acts as a surrogate mother to him. Uggams embodies the essence of a strong unwavering Black mother. She is magic, in form and practice.

Uggams' character, Kathleen, is a spiritual priestess – or Marabout – as they are known in West Africa. She introduces the idea of Mami Wata, the water spirit within the African diaspora, who haunts the myths of the Middle Passage. These myths stem from the possible destinies of those enslaved Africans who jumped overboard or threw their babies into the sea. Mami Wata is said to have guided these souls as they became one with the ocean.

Mami Wata is traditionally portrayed with an altar adorned with objects of indulgence – mirrors, combs, and fruit. But she is made literal in Nanny as a mermaid-like figure who haunts Aisha's life. In one scene, Aisha swims in a public pool in the daylight only to emerge in the night, face to face with the magnificent, Mami Wata as an omen, who pulls her down into the water as the pool becomes an ocean.

Halle Bailey's 'Little Mermaid' is already making waves among young Black girls

Jusu's film demonstrates that Black stories don't need to be situated within a familiar white framework to be both recognizable and impactful. While films such as the upcoming live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid may have cast Black actors in preexisting white narratives to be more inclusive and representative, Nanny illustrates that Black people have their own folklore; Black mermaids already exist. Jusu draws from Black history and mythology, while also subverting and recontextualizing them in a contemporary setting. It is a classic New York immigrant story, retold.

Harnessing the power of African folklore

As an Afro-Latina kid who grew up with a nanny from Mexico, the film resonated with me deeply. I had the privilege of having a second mother who was there for me as if I was her own child – and who I later realized had to leave her own children behind to care for me. The representation of kinship dynamics in this film is so real, and so poetic. Watching it on screen became like experiencing scenes from my own life as if holding up a mirror to a reality that was fading.

The final act of the film is bathed in ambiguity. It renders Aisha's journey as an open-ended question and left me wondering whether I had also drowned in a dream or sunk into a dark reality. As Jusu intends, Nanny is a haunting film of personal and racial horrors, diving into the complex experience of being a mother and an immigrant, harnessing the power of African folklore.

Correction Nov. 23, 2022

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Phylicia Rashad plays Kathleen. Though Rashad was reportedly initially cast in the role, it is Leslie Uggams who appears in the film.

• Nikyatu Jusu

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There’s fascinating drama underneath Nanny’s obligatory Blumhouse scares

Not every movie needs a horror hook

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The poster for Nanny creates the sense of a very specific, very familiar type of film through an extreme close-up on the face of Aisha, its lead. She looks distressed, her features still recognizable but lightly distorted by smears that look like runny paint or dripping water. It’s easy to picture this image accompanied by discordant music that mines tension and dread out of the stillness, supplementing a story about how this woman comes undone because of the things she’s seen. The poster advertises that Nanny is being released by Blumhouse, a studio primarily known for high-concept horror . The tagline is “We’re haunted by what we leave behind.”

All those hints that Nanny is a horror movie aren’t false advertising: Writer-director Nikyatu Jusu consciously uses the trappings of modern horror to shape the story. But she’s visibly less concerned with serving jumps and jolts to the audience than she is in crafting a resonant drama. Jusu paints a rich portrait of Aisha’s life as an undocumented Senegalese immigrant and nanny under the thumb of a wealthy white family, but the horror elements meant to visualize her internal struggles never quite cohere.

Right away, the film offers up a sense of the stiff dynamic between nanny Aisha (Anna Diop) and her employer, Amy (Michelle Monaghan). The camera frames both of them from a distance in an unbroken shot, as Amy hands Aisha a big binder of guidelines, contact information, meal plans, and more. Amy isn’t exactly unfriendly, but the camera position creates a sense of remove, chilling whatever warmth she’s trying to present. It’s nothing awful — a somewhat showy first impression, an air of entitlement. But Amy then steps across that professional boundary by asking for a hug. Aisha is briefly taken aback, but she obliges her boss. Amy doesn’t present the request like a demand, but she doesn’t have to; Aisha was hired to care for Amy’s young daughter, Rose (Rose Decker), but she’s hardly in a position to deny the woman in charge of her pay — especially on her first day of work.

Aisha dutifully records her hours and puts the receipts in Amy’s binder, though her payment is in cash and otherwise off the books. She’s cheaper than a documented nanny, and she’s hardly oblivious to the situation; as an undocumented former schoolteacher, this is simply the best avenue she can find for her skillset. Aisha needs the money — she’s hoping to bring her young son, Lamine, over from Senegal. His absence weighs heavily on her, and is made worse by her profession: While she bonds with, cares for, and generally lavishes attention on Rose, her own son is an ocean away. Aisha’s relationship with Lamine is entirely through her phone, in either garbled video chats or recordings of the moments she missed.

Aisha’s guilt over leaving her son behind manifests in strange visions. Rain pours down indoors. A distant figure stands at a distance in a lake. Spider legs cast a long shadow that unfurls like an open maw. Aisha is able to identify some of the imagery, telling Rose stories about Anansi the spider, and how his small size requires him to leverage his cunning to survive. When talking with an older woman ( Deadpool ’s Leslie Uggams) who’s more versed in the supernatural, she learns that Anansi and the mermaid-like water spirit Mami Wata are trying to communicate something to her. Aisha is fluent in multiple languages, and teaching them to Rose is part of her job. But whatever these mythical figures are trying to tell her is a mystery.

Hallucinations and time loss tied up in guilt and/or trauma is standard territory for people freaking out in arthouse movies. By now, a year without one or two cinematic descendants of The Babadook would feel incomplete. But Nanny stands apart for its imagery, realized with uncommon skill and grown out of folkloric roots far removed from other films’ standard-issue terrors of shadowy entities pounding on the wall. While Aisha’s visions unsettle her, and are meant to unsettle viewers by association, they’re subdued and gorgeous in the way they bathe her in ethereal light. There’s a sense that the visions might not be so unsettling after all, if she could only figure out what they mean.

Where another film might have focused exclusively on Aisha’s pain and mental unraveling, Jusu takes care to show her protagonist trying to live her life and wrest back some control. She vents to a friend about Lamine’s absent father, and strikes up a romance with the building’s hunky doorman (Sinqua Walls), who has a child of his own. She speaks up for herself when her employers neglect to pay her and unpaid overtime begins to pile up. Amy’s husband, Adam (Morgan Spector), says he’ll “advance” Aisha the payment, and she quietly but firmly corrects him: It’s not an advance if it’s what she’s already owed.

Jusu excels at highlighting the uncomfortable power dynamics at work, allowing Aisha’s relationship with her employers to be tense and complex rather than teetering into overtly sinister territory. There’s no malice in the way they treat Aisha, but her discomfort at the liberties they take and the bounds they overstep is always palpable. Amy lends Aisha a dress at one point, insistent that it suits her skin, even as Aisha remarks that it’s a bit tight. Adam’s photography adorns the apartment in big, blown-up prints, and he’s eager to talk with Aisha about the subjects of his art and his fame: Black poverty and strife. These interactions superficially recall the awkward “meet the family” moments of Jordan Peele’s Get Out , but the truth of them is cleverly mundane: Her employers feel so comfortably above her that they don’t have to consider her interiority at all.

This dynamic is so well executed, in fact, that it’s curious that Jusu even bothered to dabble in horror, given how much less effective it is than the drama. Aisha’s creepy visions are the weakest part of the film, building to an abrupt end while raising a recurring question: Will an audience only sit still to watch the social perils of a Senegalese immigrant if they’re promised a few stretches of fearful apartment-wandering in between?

Horror becomes a storytelling crutch when it’s used this way, as though it’s the only way to purge the typical happily-ever-after expectations of a more conventional film. The Oscar-bait version of Nanny is as easy to picture as the scary one suggested by the poster, perhaps retaining Diop’s nuanced lead performance, but smothering it in weepy speeches and a theme of virtue rewarded, where hard work pays off and the mean characters either see the error of their ways or get what’s coming to them. Horror may truly be the only storytelling mode that reliably primes the audience for this pessimistic version of the story, but Jusu’s otherwise impressive work suffers when she divides its focus and hides its clearest ideas under genre distractions.

Nanny debuts in theaters on Nov. 23 and will stream on Prime Video on Dec. 16.

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Screen Rant

Nanny review: anna diop shines in nikyatu jusu's haunting feature debut [sundance].

There are so many moving parts within Nanny, coalescing to bring an overall moving, effective portrait of the immigrant experience in America.

Writer-director Nikyatu Jusu, in her feature directorial debut, masterfully marries folkloric horror with a haunting character study and analysis of the American Dream. There are so many moving parts within Nanny , coalescing to bring an overall moving, effective portrait of the immigrant experience in America, and the heartache of leaving one’s home and loved ones behind.

Aisha (Anna Diop) is a Senegalese immigrant who takes up work as a nanny for Amy's (Michelle Monaghan) daughter Rose (Rose Decker) in New York City. She works (and overworks) as she tries to raise enough money to bring her young son Lamine (Jahleel Kamara) to the U.S. to live with her permanently. As her workload increases — and her overtime hours go uncompensated by Amy — Aisha grows all the more frustrated as her promises to Lamine begin to sound empty. Meanwhile, Aisha starts to hear and see things around her that blur her reality and intensify her feelings and struggles.

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Jusu imbues Nanny with supernatural and spiritual elements that aid in understanding Aisha’s headspace, the unease she so often feels as an outsider, and the constant pain that goes along with the emotional toll of taking care of someone else’s child while she’s unable to properly care for her own. These supernatural aspects manifest in disconcerting ways, threatening to consume Aisha in the physical world — the sound of water rushing down, flooding Aisha’s senses, the shadow of a spider’s legs as it crawls closer and closer, the creaking of the door that alerts her to something, even if she can’t quite make sense of the signs. These things together bring the story to an intense, moving conclusion, but they are also the parts of the narrative that could've been more  developed.

When Nanny is exploring Aisha’s experiences as a Senegalese immigrant, the disparities in treatment and equity as an employee to a wealthy, white American family, and the hardship of being a mother to one child while having to leave hers behind, the film is exquisite and nuanced. Jusu offers scathing commentary about the American Dream, which, as one character points out, is more like “work until you die.” Through Aisha, the film also delves into the subtle racism she contends with and the struggle to be paid what she deserves when Amy attempts to take advantage of her time. The score by Tanerélle and Bartek Gliniak is eerie and intense, beautifully meshing together with the story to create a distinct atmosphere.

The through-line about survival and heeding the signs of warning are all the more heartbreaking when contextualizing it within the framework of the American Dream — Aisha is so overworked and exhausted that she isn’t able to focus on them. Jusu makes the case that survival alone isn’t enough, but that properly living and forging a path in the U.S. as a migrant also comes at a cost. By working in African folklore like Mami Wata, a water spirit, and Anansi the Spider, who often prevails against enemies that are seemingly stronger, Nanny elevates its central character and themes in ways that make for an engaging and achingly beautiful viewing experience. Nanny does drop off a bit as it gets closer to its ending, but picks back up again with urgency.

The film’s haunting nature is made all the more so by Anna Diop’s gorgeous portrayal of Aisha. Through her eyes alone, Diop conveys the hollow ache Aisha feels when speaking with Lamine and the grit of a survivor whose frustration and sadness pulses just beneath the surface, all while her slightly slumped shoulders scream of weariness. Her performance is aided by the fact that Jusu wrote a multidimensional character who has a tremendous amount of depth. Nanny could’ve easily tried to give further insight into Monaghan’s Amy, but maintains Aisha’s perspective throughout without having to get involved in the former’s household drama.

While the horror could’ve been expanded upon further and used to greater effect along with its central plot, Jusu, with the help of cinematographer Rina Yang, who employs close-ups of Aisha to convey her feelings of disquiet and separation from her surroundings, turns in a stunning debut feature. Nanny is striking over and packs an emotional punch, grounded by a phenomenal, nuanced performance by Diop. It's the kind of horror film that lingers on the mind and captivates quite thoroughly in its blending of supernatural and character drama, offering a visual experience that can be incredibly breathtaking when it's at its strongest.

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Nanny premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The film is 97 minutes long and is not yet rated.

The Nanny Review

21 May 1999

A Hammer Horror about a nanny? True, it’s a hard sell, but everything about this film, from Bette Davis’ inspired casting as the nefarious unnamed nanny, through the spot-on depiction of a nuclear family gradually falling apart, to the unsettling finale is as fresh as the first drop of Technicolor blood Hammer dripped onto celluloid. Director Seth Holt avoids the red stuff here in favour of subtler intoxicants; paranoia, twisted sympathies and enough distilled hatred to bring Mary Poppins (1964) back down to earth.

The source of the film’s deeply disturbing feel is the nanny. Though we see her feeding some pigeons as the movie opens and though the forlorn family see her as a Godsend, young Joey knows her past is a murky one. Here Holt toys with us, eking out sympathy for the nanny thanks to the sheer obnoxiousness of Joey, a horror of a ten year old. Queerly, nagging suspicions about the nanny pale alongside this brattish distraction so that when Davis’ dormant evil rises to the surface, we – and, most likely, our stomachs - are in knots.

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‘Nanny’ Review: In This Atmospheric Horror Film, the American Dream Is the Real Monster

Kate erbland, editorial director.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Amazon releases the film in theaters on Wednesday, November 23, with a streaming release to follow on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, December 16.

Ghosts are everywhere in Nikyatu Jusu ‘s atmospheric feature directorial debut, “ Nanny ,” though few of them look like we’ve come to expect from decades of horror films. Sometimes, it’s just a feeling, a particular twist of the wind. Sometimes, it’s a photograph. Sometimes, it’s a story. And, sometimes, just sometimes, it’s a whole person, gazing out from beyond, well,  somewhere.  From the start, there is a queasy energy to Jusu’s get-under-your-skin film, one made all the more unsettling to her dedication to showing a full-spectrum leading lady (your usual final girl, she is  not ) caught in a surprising milieu.

Aisha (Anna Diop) is a Senegalese immigrant who has arrived in New York City with her own American Dream, though one that should really not feel so out of reach: she just wants her adorable young son Lamine, who is back in Senegal, to join her. When she gets a new job nannying for an affluent couple with a cute kid (Rose Decker), the steady paycheck seems destined to get Aisha and Lamine on the right track. But the real cost is one Aisha could never have seen coming.

Despite Aisha’s happiness over the new gig, something feels wrong from the start. The morning of her first day, a sleeping Aisha is plunged into a discomfiting nightmare — one of many key scenes that involve water, both dreamt and real, often bolstered by a rich green and blue color palette — and even waking up to realize, no, she was not actually drowning doesn’t add much relief. Cinematographer Rina Yang’s camera both boxes Aisha in and sets her at a far remove; when she first arrives at Amy (a chilling Michelle Monaghan) and Adam’s (Morgan Spector) apartment, Aisha can’t shake the feeling she’s being watched, and she is,  as we both observe her in an elevator and through the surveillance camera tracking her. But that claustrophobia doesn’t abate upon her arrival in the large apartment, with Aisha and Amy circling each other at a far distance. When they do come close to each other, it’s hardly comforting.

But the kid is cute and the pay is good, if only Amy could remember how much she has promised Aisha for her daily work and any special asks. ( Is  Amy, brittle and spacey and touchy, really so forgetful? Or is this just another one of the many micro-aggressions that Jusu skillfully piles on over the course of the film?) Monaghan is unnerving as Amy, a seemingly successful professional who falls to pieces at home, a stranger to her daughter, someone who treats her creepy husband as king of the castle while also bemoaning the current state of feminism.

Things only get worse when Adam, a photographer who seems to have a real affection for chronicling unrest, war, racism, and pain in his work, returns home. Amy and Adam’s marriage is clearly not working out, and while Aisha does her best to ignore it, the pair soon delight in playing their careful, smart nanny against the other. That would all be bad enough — plus Aisha’s constant need to ask for her pay, which is often incorrect, or Adam’s lingering looks — but as Jusu slowly turns up the tension, it’s obvious something far more sinister is lurking inside the walls of their cold, massive apartment. Outside, things are odd, too, as Aisha struggles to reach Lamine and keeps “seeing” him around town.

While Bartek Gliniak and Tanerélle’s score does a lot of traditional “horror movie!” work — lots of strings, plenty of foreboding tones — Jusu opts to turn her attention to the more edifying elements of Aisha’s life, including a budding romance with Malik, the doorman in Amy and Adam’s building (a charming Sinqua Walls). It’s also Malik who introduces her to his clairvoyant grandmother Kathleen (Leslie Uggams), who seems to see plenty others can’t (or won’t). Too often, however, that includes Jusu, whose interest in showing the full range of Aisha’s life feels like a misdirect toward the meat of the film. (Related: Aisha and Malik’s relationship might sink the film’s tension, but it also shows off Jusu’s chops as a romantic director, these two have heat and she directs it all beautifully.)

Still, Jusu’s desire to dig into Aisha outside the realm of whatever the hell is happening with Amy and Adam (and the many things they represent), offers Diop a multi-faceted character to play, the likes of which we don’t often see in traditional horror films. As Aisha, Diop is gifted with a full meal of a role, and she easily embodies all the different Aishas we meet over the course of the film. (Jusu has said she long had her eye on the actress, best known for TV series like “Titans” and “24: Legacy,” and like many of her impulses exhibited in the film, it was the right one.)

But which one is the real one? Which one is the ghost? Jusu’s script, while prone to meandering through its second act, delivers a powerful punch as the film ratchets toward its inevitable conclusion. The first-time filmmaker may be attempting to fit too many ideas into one sleek package, but that doesn’t mitigate the truth of “Nanny”: All of it haunts.

“Nanny” premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

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‘Nanny’ Review: An Immigrant Mother Separated From Her Child Fears the Worst

In this bold debut, writer-director Nikyatu Jusu conjures figures from West African folklore to critique another myth: the American Dream.

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Peter Debruge

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Aisha didn’t move to New York City to raise some other mother’s kids. She moved there with the intention of bringing her young son over from Senegal. In order to pay his way, however, Aisha must do as so many undocumented women have in the Big Apple: She must play mom to a stranger’s child, while a family member takes care of her own back home in Africa. In “ Nanny ,” debuting writer-director Nikyatu Jusu brings fresh eyes to this widely accepted dynamic, so rarely seen from the perspective of the immigrant worker herself.

Aisha is a strong and independent heroine, though it’s not easy to be assertive in a culture that expects subservience of outsiders. A confident first-time filmmaker who doesn’t shy away from the power of ambiguity and suggestion, Jusu draws on aspects of West African folklore, invoking such supernatural figures as Anansi the Spider, a tiny trickster who uses his cunning to outwit larger rivals, and Mami Wata, a seductive water spirit or mermaid with dark motives. Their presence turns Aisha’s pursuit of opportunity into a kind of nightmare, as these old-world myths clash with the one that lured her across the ocean — that chimera we call the American dream.

More psychological than scary, “Nanny” might still be described as a horror movie. It certainly sounds like one, as ominous noises creak and strain beneath otherwise innocuous scenes. The film benefits a great deal from the Dolby Institute Fellowship grant, which gives select Sundance indies (including “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Swiss Army Man” in previous years) a major post-production upgrade. Jusu’s uneasy-making sound design creates tension where the visuals alone might not, such that neither Aisha ( Anna Diop , best known for her role as Starfire on “Titans”) nor audiences can quite trust their eyes.

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We might ask ourselves: What is Aisha most afraid of? She’s terrified of never seeing her son, Lamine (Jahleel Kamara), again, of course. That much we sense in the frequent, fretful calls she makes back to Senegal, checking in with Aunty Mariatou (Olamide Candide-Johnson) to make sure her boy is all right. But she’s also nervous about losing herself in this new place, about what she’s becoming in an unfamiliar city where it so often feels as if Aisha is at the mercy of forces beyond her control — forces that might even be described as magic.

“Nanny” finds original ways to convey the pressures Aisha faces in adjusting to her new home. Because the character doesn’t speak much, her visions — like the sight of a spider crawling into her open mouth while she sleeps, or the run-in with a mermaid who tries to drag her under at the local swimming pool — serve as haunting projections of Aisha’s innermost fears. They startle the character but don’t have quite the same effect on viewers, who may marvel at Jusu’s capacity to conjure such vivid hallucinations, even as they struggle to interpret what they mean.

More intimidating in many ways is the white family for whom Aisha works: outwardly pleasant, yet strangely threatening. They hold the power — to employ, to pay, potentially even to deport. Working mother Amy (Michelle Monaghan) welcomes Aisha into her elegant Manhattan apartment, with its dapper Black doorman (Sinqua Walls) and curiously sterile design style, as if career woman Amy and her (absent) photojournalist husband (Morgan Spector) subscribe to the Victorian philosophy that children should be seen and not heard.

Amy does her best to appear warm and accepting of this foreigner who will be cooking and caring for young Rose (Rose Decker), a girl who, as described, sounds difficult and allergy-prone. Amy shows Aisha the room she’ll use for overnight stays. “Please, make this space yours,” she says before handing the new nanny a binder full of guidelines, and we can’t help anticipating how this caring yet controlling mother will react when Aisha inevitably misinterprets one of her decrees.

Jusu meticulously calibrates the interactions between her characters, revealing a nuanced understanding of race and class relations. No wonder Aisha imagines herself drowning on multiple occasions in the film: Her disillusionment with everything America represented for her is overwhelming. She’s entered a system designed to exploit her, where even her allies can turn out to be predators — especially those who identify as liberal (Jusu makes it a point to show that Amy and Adam have a diverse group of friends).

In framing the entire film from Aisha’s perspective, Jusu upends the formula of a familiar genre, one that traditionally plays on the anxiety any mother might understandably feel in entrusting a foreigner to care for their kids. What if Rose winds up preferring this substitute mom? What if the nanny goes rogue and endangers the child? Now imagine those same uncertainties through Aisha’s eyes. “Nanny” climaxes much as a movie like “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” might, with Aisha kneeling over Rose in the bathtub, a raised kitchen knife ready to stab the child — except that here, we’re seeing it from an entirely new point of view.

The twist that follows represents a kind of worst-case scenario for Aisha. For audiences, it may seem strangely unsurprising, even predictable, given the clues (too tidily resolved in the film’s pinned-on epilogue). But after 90 minutes of mounting dread and mirages, of begging to be paid what she’s owed from her supposedly woke employers, reality catches up with her, far worse than any monster.

Reviewed online, Jan. 16, 2022. In Sundance Film Festival (U.S. Narrative Competition). Running time: 98 MIN.

• Production: A Stay Gold Features, Topic Studios presentation, in association with Linlay Prods. of a Stay Gold Features production. (World sales: CAA, Los Angeles.) Producers: Nikkia Moulterie, Daniela Taplin Lundberg. Executive producers: Maria Zuckerman, Ryan Heller, Michael Bloom, Rebecca Cammarata, Nnamdi Asomucha, Bill Berenson, Laurie Benenson, Grace Lay, Sumalee Montano, Nikyatu Jusu. Co-producers: Ged Dickersin, Kim Coleman.
• Crew: Director, writer: Nikyatu Jusu. Camera: Rina Yang. Editor: Robert Mead. Music: Tanerélle, Bartek Gliniak.
• With: Anna Diop, Michelle Monaghan, Sinqua Walls, Morgan Spector, Rose Decker, Leslie Uggams, Olamide Candide Johnson, Jahleel Kamara. (English, French, Wolof dialogue)

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Piecing together a new life in New York City while caring for the child of an Upper East Side family, immigrant nanny Aisha is forced to confront a concealed truth that threatens to shatter ... Read all Piecing together a new life in New York City while caring for the child of an Upper East Side family, immigrant nanny Aisha is forced to confront a concealed truth that threatens to shatter her precarious American Dream. Piecing together a new life in New York City while caring for the child of an Upper East Side family, immigrant nanny Aisha is forced to confront a concealed truth that threatens to shatter her precarious American Dream.

• Nikyatu Jusu
• Michelle Monaghan
• Sinqua Walls
• 92 User reviews
• 105 Critic reviews
• 72 Metascore
• 11 wins & 17 nominations

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• Annoyed American Girl
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• Trivia The first horror film to win Sundance's Grand Jury Prize, at the same time making writer/director Nikyatu Jusu the second Black female filmmaker to claim the award.
• Goofs The clock on the wall at the hairdresser's reads 11:15, but as the camera cuts back and forth to different angles of the same scene, the clock mysteriously jumps to display a completely different hour.
• Connections Referenced in Amanda the Jedi Show: Movies that Destroyed and Restored my Faith in Humanity | Sundance 2022 (2022)
• Soundtracks The Best Written by Sidney Esiri & Michael Ajereh Collins (as Michael Collins Ajereh) Performed by Sidney Esiri (as Dr. Sid) Courtesy of Mavin Records & Blaze Unlimited

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• Dec 17, 2022
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• December 16, 2022 (United States)
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• Runtime 1 hour 39 minutes
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‘Nanny’: The troubles of an immigrant caregiver are scary enough

Anna diop plays a senegalese nanny in the horror-adjacent drama by first-time writer-director nikyatu jusu.

Perhaps the scariest thing in “Nanny” is the opening credits, which warn viewers that the film comes from Blumhouse — the horror-centric production company that brought you “ The Invisible Man ,” as the film’s trailer touts. Yet while this atmospheric tale of a Senegalese immigrant working in New York as a nanny for the daughter of a well-to-do White couple may be horror-adjacent — there are nightmares, rendered as lifelike visions — it is not, strictly speaking, a spooky movie.

Correction: not in the way you might expect . The clueless privilege on display in the feature debut of writer-director Nikyatu Jusu — a Baltimore-based assistant professor of film at George Mason University, born to immigrants from Sierra Leone — can be pretty disturbing.

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Anna Diop plays Aisha, a former teacher now making do as a child-care provider for the young daughter (Rose Decker) of globe-trotting photojournalist Adam (Morgan Spector) and Amy (Michelle Monaghan), a micromanaging workaholic mom who intimidates Aisha with her three-ring binder full of rules. Aisha, a single mother, hopes to bring her own young son (Jahleel Kamara) over from Africa as soon as she can. In the meantime, Amy expects Aisha to spend more and more overnights in the spare bedroom, as late work and frequent travel consume the attention of her employers — when Adam isn’t hitting on Aisha. Amy, for her part, mostly forgets to pay Aisha what she is due. The obvious stress takes its toll on our protagonist, who experiences hallucination-like bad dreams (and the occasional waking vision) involving water and a spidery apparition.

These chimeras accelerate after Aisha is befriended by Malik (Sinqua Walls), the charming front desk attendant in Amy and Adam’s building, and he introduces her to his grandmother Kathleen (Leslie Uggams), a spiritual consultant who schools Aisha in the African folklore of the trickster figure Anansi the spider and Mami Wata (“mother water”).

For Jusu, they are more metaphorical — symbols of survival and resistance for oppressed people, as Kathleen tells Aisha — than paranormal phenomena. That’s not to say they aren’t creepy when they do pop up, and there are a couple of jump scares here and there. But the film, despite being mostly set in a huge, expensive apartment that inexplicably seems to be illuminated only by low-wattage lightbulbs, by and large resists the easy tropes of conventional horror.

Instead, Jusu focuses, with an assured storytelling that slowly builds a mood of real-world dread, on more corporeal concerns. Why is the apartment so dark? That’s not the question this promising filmmaker is interested in. Rather, she wants to ask, as Kathleen frames it in a challenge to Aisha, “Is your rage your superpower or your kryptonite?”

R. Opening Dec. 2 at area theaters; available Dec. 16 on Prime Video. Contains some strong language, brief sexuality and some scary images. In English and some French with subtitles. 98 minutes.

• Action/Adventure
• Children's/Family
• Documentary/Reality
• Amazon Prime Video

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Nanny’ on Amazon Prime Video, an Astute Drama About the Immigrant Experience, With a Horror Fringe

Where to stream:.

• Nanny (2022)

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Nanny ( now on Amazon Prime Video ) is the work of a promising first-time feature director, Nikyatu Jusu, who crafts an insightful story of a Senegalese immigrant whose haunting dreams seem to be slowly seeping into her waking life. The domestic drama with a tantalizing veneer of horror debuted at Sundance 2022, where star Anna Diop’s penetrating character work and the film’s substantial atmospherics earned it the Grand Jury Prize. But will it cross over to mainstream audiences?

NANNY : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s official. It’s a little awkward, but it’s official: Aisha (Anna Diop) just landed a nanny gig, for which she’ll take care of young Rose (Rose Decker), daughter to Amy (Michelle Monaghan) and Adam (Morgan Spector). The vibe is… odd. Friendly, but definitely odd. Amy gives Aisha a binder full of helpful information, and a hug. Amy seems relieved to have found some help, and reassured as Aisha quickly bonds with the adorable, agreeable Rose. So what did they agree on for Aisha to stay overnight? $100? No, Aisha corrects her, it’s $150. Odd, that there’d be a quibble over 50 lousy dollars, especially considering Amy and her family live in a modern condo with its own private elevator and a refrigerator stocked with precision-stacked containers of food that Rose doesn’t like. So Aisha makes her Senegalese food, and she eats it right up.

Aisha is an immigrant from Senegal, her young son back home in the care of a cousin; soon she’ll make enough money for them to travel to New York, hopefully in time for the boy’s birthday. She facetimes with her boy, and clearly aches to see him in person, to touch him. But sometimes, Aisha seems… troubled. By something. Something noncorporeal, arriving with ominous drones on the soundtrack. Like when she dreams of drowning in bed, wet sheets suffocating her, or when she’s in the fancy apartment and the shower comes on and nobody’s in it, and Rose is just playing hide-and-seek under her parents’ bed. Amy invites people over for a fancy-dress dinner party to celebrate Adam’s return from a trip – he’s a war correspondent – and lends Aisha a gorgeous red form-fitting dress so she may stand nearby and not participate in the conversation about political strife. But at least she’s dressed for the occasion.

The strange dreams continue, sometimes during the day at inopportune times – another nanny scolds Aisha at the park after Rose wanders off the grounds. The concierge in Amy and Adam’s building, Malik (Sinqua Walls), asks her on a date, and she meets his mother (Leslie Uggams), who’s less than a psychic but more than a folklorist, so let’s say she’s sort of a… mystic? Sure. She opens up to Malik, and he to her. Tensions bubble with Amy and Adam, who are nice people I think, save for Amy not paying Aisha’s overtime, prompting Aisha to pester Adam for the cash. Meanwhile, Aisha’s hallucinations become increasingly lucid, and they get worse once she reads Rose a children’s story about Anansi, a mischievous figure from West African folklore. He’s a spider, Anansi. Don’t say you haven’t been warned, arachnophobes.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Nanny is in the same sort-of elevated-horror league as Atlantics , a romance with an unsettling supernatural fringe.

Performance Worth Watching: Diop – of DC TV series Titans – is extraordinary as a strong, smart woman whose confidence is shaken by the apparent supernatural elements encroaching upon her life.

Memorable Dialogue: A fellow African-immigrant friend gives Aisha perspective on being a slave back home or a slave in America: “At least here, when you work, you see the money.”

Sex and Skin: A thoroughly steamy sex scene steeped in succulent purple lighting.

Our Take: Jusu has tremendous control over Nanny ’s visual composition – the lighting and color scheme are evocative, and the surrealist dream/dreamlike sequences are subtle and creepy. Narratively, however, the film doesn’t find enough traction with the scary stuff, and is significantly stronger in dramatizing the struggles of a still-young immigrant contending with microaggressions that feel like regular aggressions, and the occasional regular aggression that hits like a shotgun blast.

Unfortunately, the horror components feel underdeveloped, weirdness used as food coloring for the story, or a superficial extrapolation upon Aisha’s struggles – mythic forces from back home making their way into her stead to help her or warn her or just generally make the movie more interesting. It’s compelling, but never fully sets its hook. Jusu finds far greater means of provocation in the cultural and racial dynamics simmering beneath the surface of Aisha and Amy’s exchanges, and cultivates a tender romance between Aisha and Malik that gets nudged aside for skittering spiders and Aisha’s frequent visions of her drowning. There’s plenty to like and appreciate about Nanny , especially the cast; Jusu inspires a performance form Diop that cleanly draws out the subtext about the immigrant experience. Alienation and guilt may be the most poignant horrors in this story.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite its flaws Nanny is from a skilled filmmaker who deserves our eyes on her work.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com .

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Powerful, tense chiller about inequity and parenthood.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Movie is largely about cultural inequity and the c

Aisha spends the movie struggling and is a victim

Offers a thorough, rounded portrayal of both Seneg

Scary images. Bloody wound, blood smear, blood in

Topless woman. Kissing. Caressing. Brief shot of t

Infrequent language includes uses of "f--k" and "s

Social drinking at party. A character comes home l

Parents need to know that Nanny is a horror-drama about a woman from Senegal (Anna Diop) who's working as a nanny for a wealthy New York family. She's hoping to raise money to bring her own son over, but strange things start happening. Violence includes scary stuff and spooky noises, dripping blood and blood…

Positive Messages

Movie is largely about cultural inequity and the cruel imbalance that throws together those with little choice and those with too much choice. Also examines the responsibilities of motherhood.

Positive Role Models

Aisha spends the movie struggling and is a victim of her circumstances. In a supporting role, Malik comes across as kind, thoughtful, caring; his mother is the same, welcoming Aisha into their home and offering her spiritual help.

Diverse Representations

Offers a thorough, rounded portrayal of both Senegalese immigrants living in New York and Black New Yorkers. The only downside is seeing how much the expats are having to struggle just to raise a little money for their families. The writer-director is a Sierra Leonean American woman. White characters are three-dimensional but also irresponsible and unlikable (one also has a taste for culturally appropriated art).

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Scary images. Bloody wound, blood smear, blood in bathtub water. Child briefly in peril. Death discussed. Lots of scary noises. Nightmares. Character nearly suffocates when a wet sheet appears over her face. Images of drowning. Character grips knife blade in hand, blood drips on floor. Character throws self into water -- possible suicide attempt. A spider lands on a sleeping person's face and enters her mouth. Snake appears in bed. Brief shot of a bloody movie on TV. Woman bites a man's lip when he tries to kiss her. Character slips and falls on wet floor. Arguing. Description of a violent uprising. Violent description of police subduing someone with schizophrenia having a "manic episode."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Topless woman. Kissing. Caressing. Brief shot of two people having sex, one atop the other. Shot of two people spooning after sex. Woman in shower, side view of breast partly visible. Flirting. Woman curled up in tub, naked, but nothing sensitive shown. Married character tries to kiss another woman. Description of a man "impregnating schoolgirls" in Senegal. Jokey dialogue about a man having five children from five different women.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent language includes uses of "f--k" and "s--t," plus "dumb," "thank God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Social drinking at party. A character comes home late from work seeming a little tipsy (she drops her keys).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Nanny is a horror-drama about a woman from Senegal ( Anna Diop ) who's working as a nanny for a wealthy New York family. She's hoping to raise money to bring her own son over, but strange things start happening. Violence includes scary stuff and spooky noises, dripping blood and blood smears, a child in peril, death, images of drowning, and more. Two characters flirt, kiss, and have (brief) sex; one sits on top of the other, and a woman's bare breasts are visible. Another partial breast is seen while a woman is in the shower. A married character tries to kiss another woman, and there's some sex-related dialogue. Foul language is infrequent but includes few uses of "f--k" and "s--t." Adults drink socially at a party, and a character appears tipsy after returning home late from work. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

In NANNY, former teacher Aisha ( Anna Diop ) leaves her son in Senegal while she heads to New York City to raise money working as a nanny for wealthy families. She gets a job looking after Rose (Rose Decker), whose father, Adam ( Morgan Spector ), a photojournalist, is hardly ever home. Rose's mother, Amy ( Michelle Monaghan ), is frazzled, overworked, and sometimes controlling. At first things go smoothly, and Aisha and Rose quickly bond. Aisha also starts dating doorman Malik ( Sinqua Walls ), whose mother (Leslie Uggams) is a priestess and welcomes Aisha into their home. But soon Aisha finds herself working overtime and having to remind Amy and Adam to pay her. She also can't seem to get to her son or his caretaker on the phone. She begins to see a variety of disturbing visions, from spiders to sudden rainstorms inside rooms to mysterious figures.

Is It Any Good?

The feature writing and directing debut of Nikyatu Jusu, this creeper feels like expert filmmaking, with its stark thesis on inequity, its nervy music and soundscape, and its striking performances. Nanny is up front about its situation. Aisha says she misses the good parts about her native Senegal but not the bad parts; apparently they were enough to make her choose the bitterly ironic situation of taking care of another family's child so that she can raise money to get hers back. (Such money cannot be raised in Senegal.) Diop's strong, empathetic performance conveys the pain of this, how every waking moment without her child hurts Aisha. Jusu is so astute as a filmmaker that she even conveys character nuances in Aisha's employers, suggesting their pained relationship, Adam's childishness (and his culturally appropriated African art), and Amy's frayed nerves.

Of course, starting with a solid basis in character makes the scary stuff in Nanny more effective, but Jusu doesn't seem as interested in scaring her audience as she is in simply suggesting the horror that exists in life. Aisha's terrors and visions spring right out of the fabric of her everyday existence. Sometimes they're routine nightmares, but other times, she's just looking in the mirror or testing some bathwater when something terrifying happens. All aspects of the production, from the lighting and colors to the unsettling music and sound design, handily mesh together to create Aisha's world. A too tidy, last-minute ending seems to let viewers off the hook a little too easily, but, on the other hand, it could also be part of the movie's biting tapestry.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Nanny 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

Is the movie scary ? How can horror be used to address issues in the real world?

How does this movie examine inequity based on culture and race? What does it have to say on the subject?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 23, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : December 16, 2022
• Cast : Anna Diop , Michelle Monaghan , Sinqua Walls
• Director : Nikyatu Jusu
• Inclusion Information : Black directors, Female actors, Black actors, Black writers
• Studios : Amazon Studios , Blumhouse Productions
• Genre : Horror
• Run time : 98 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some language and brief sexuality/nudity
• Last updated : August 25, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Nanny movie review: Strong performances, muddled themes

By maxance vincent | dec 19, 2022.

Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny   is a big ask for a film released on Amazon Prime Video . Running at only 99 minutes, the movie is both a family drama, with the titular Nanny ( Anna Diop ) being at the center of the friction between the child (Rose Decker) and her parents (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector), and a supernatural horror film , where the Nanny has strange visions that blur her perception of reality and fiction.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t amount to very much, even if the performances keep the film from being a total waste of talent. Diop plays Aisha, a Senegalese-born immigrant who hopes to make enough money as a Nanny to bring her son, Lamine (Jahleel Kamara), to the United States. However, Amy (Monaghan), the mother of Rose (Decker), doesn’t pay her on time and further complicates things when Rose shares affection with Aisha while she becomes distant from her mother.

It’s also a romantic drama, with Aisha meeting Malik (Sinqua Walls) and falling in love with him. Surprisingly, that’s the film’s weakest part because it doesn’t add anything to Aisha’s character and our understanding of what’s truly going on. The strongest element is how the drama builds up between Aisha and Amy, with Diop and Monaghan being the movie’s best parts. Diop, in particular, is a total revelation in a film that solely focuses on her journey and hopes to pursue the American Dream.

That dream is quickly shattered when the distance occurs between her and Amy, but it’s always interesting to see her on screen from beginning to end. Even during scenes where she loses control, and you have no idea what’s going on, Diop emotionally anchors the film to ensure that we’re always invested, or at least partially intrigued, to see what will happen next. The same goes with Monaghan, who is utterly riveting in a scene where she breaks down in front of Diop.

Prime Video’s Nanny movie is underwhelming with a sloppy and jumbled ending

Diop also has an incredible monologue during that scene that exacerbates the tension between the two and makes it feel incredibly authentic. That’s the sign of two great actors giving their all and being directed by someone who knows how to best exploit their emotional powers. It would’ve been a must-see if Nanny solely focused on that family drama that rifts the two protagonists apart.

However, as soon as the movie veers into the supernatural, or, should I say, the surreal, everything becomes jumbled, and not for the better. It’s perhaps too ambitious, never knowing what’s real and what isn’t and consistently shifting how the plot changes in drastic directions that unfortunately go nowhere. I won’t give anything away for those moments because it’s best to see it yourself, but it could be the “make-or-break.” part that boards you further in the film or distances you from the story.

Regardless, Nanny remains an exciting watch. Its lead performances from Anna Diop and Michelle Monaghan are magnifying and hold most of our interest from beginning to end. Unfortunately, it is a bit underwhelming with how it comes together in a sloppy and jumbled ending. Still, its emotional core remains intact if your sole focus is on Diop, who will hopefully become an even bigger star than she is after this.

Nanny is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. 

Next. December movies: 6 movies to watch (and 3 to skip) in December 2022. dark

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, little annie nanny.

Now streaming on:

"The Nanny Diaries," perhaps better titled "The Bonfire of the Nannies," is told from the point of view of a bright college graduate who is accidentally hired as a nanny by a rich Manhattan family. Having studied both anthropology and child development at NYU, she is ideally prepared to study both the X family and its issue, the 5-year-old Grayer X, and the movie is presented like the results of a research study.

It begins, indeed, with its best scene, as Nanny ( Scarlett Johansson ) visits the Museum of Natural History and explains the dioramas showing lifelike models of Upper East Side natives seen in their natural habitats. One such exhibit comes to life: The Xs. Mrs. X ( Laura Linney ) having paid her dues by giving birth, now depends on money to see her through the care-giving stage. Mr. X ( Paul Giamatti ) is a workaholic toiler in the money fields, who is having an affair, which allows his wife to free up valuable shopping time. And Little Grayer has inherited the ingrained traits of his parents; he is acquisitive, aggressive, deceptive and demanding. Also a sad little boy.

Nanny, whose real name is Annie, got the job by saving the life of Grayer after he wandered away from his mom in Central Park. Annie says she is " Annie ," Mrs. X hears "Nanny," and concludes that Annie is a nanny, assuming that Nanny is both a job description and a given name. Even the legendary Butcher Drier of Three Oaks, Mich., was called "Ed," not "Butcher," and you won't find a better smoked ham anywhere.

Mrs. X prides herself on buying the best of everything, including nannies. Although most nannies undergo a screening that would make the Transportation Security Administration proud, Nanny's chief qualification seems to be that she's an experienced baby-sitter. Also, of course, that she looks like Scarlett Johansson, and hiring a nanny that looks like a movie star is a status symbol for any family.

The movie is adapted from a best seller, unread by me, written by real-life NYU grads and sometime nannies Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, and rumored to be based on some of their field observations. Through the eyes of Nanny, we see the rules governing dress, fashion, business, entertainment and conspicuous consumption in the same world that was memorably X-rayed by Tom Wolfe in "The Bonfire of the Vanities. "

It was Anne-Marie Bigot de Cornuel, sometime mistress to Louis XIV, who observed, "No man is a hero to his valet." She might also have said, "No woman is a heroine to her nanny," if only "nanny" were a French word, which, like so many words, it is not. Nanny sees Mrs. X as a materialistic, spoiled creature who ignores her husband's infidelities because she has no desire to be divorced from her lifestyle, and besides, who would demand exclusive rights to the unpleasant Mr. X, anyway?

What we see of her, however, is more complex. Mrs. X is both monster and victim, who went swimming among the wealthy and got swept away by the undertow. She's consuming as fast as she can, but has few resources to spend on little Grayer. Nor, Nanny discovers, is it much fun working for her. Assigned a room resembling a monk's cell, she is expected to be an all-purpose house cleaner, errand runner and scapegoat for any failings of the perfect Grayer. Her life is so cloistered that she has only three contacts: her mom, a New Jersey nurse ( Donna Murphy ); her best friend Lynette ( Alicia Keys ), and a guy who lives upstairs who she calls Harvard Hottie ( Chris Evans ). Having been driven to nannying by uncertainty about who she "really is," she is at least now certain she's really not a nanny.

The plot develops a few problems familiar to anyone who watches TV and employs the Occupation Specified Rule (whenever the occupation of a minor character is specified, that occupation will become necessary in the plot). Laura Linney engages our sympathy more than Mrs. X really deserves, and Johansson has a kind of secret wit about her in certain roles that makes her seem in on the joke.

But the movie itself is sort of bland and obvious and comfortable. Nobody is really despicable enough, a mistake Tom Wolfe would never have made. It was directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini , whose masterpiece, " American Splendor " (2003), told the story of the sardonic real-life Cleveland file clerk and comic book author-hero Harvey Pekar . I'd love to see his rewrite of this material.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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106 minutes

Scarlett Johansson as Annie/Nanny

Laura Linney as Mrs. X

Paul Giamatti as Mr. X

Donna Murphy as Annie's mom

Alicia Keys as Lynette

Nathan Corddry as Calvin

Directed by

• Shari Springer Berman
• Robert Pulcini
• Jenny Bicks

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