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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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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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‘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.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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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.

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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Nanny – Movie Review [Prime Video] (4/5)

Posted by Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard | Nov 23, 2022 | 3 minutes

NANNY on Prime Video is a movie described as a “psychological horror fable of displacement” which is spot-on. This one will haunt you – just don’t expect a classic horror movie. Read our full Nanny movie review here!

NANNY is a new Prime Video movie produced by Blumhouse. It’s labeled as both a drama and a horror movie, which is correct. The first hour or so is much more drama. However, the horrors shown in this movie do hit harder due to the character-driven story.

The ending is both heartbreaking  and  uplifting, which ensures that it stays with its viewer for quite some time. The story in this movie is called a “psychological horror fable of displacement” which is a perfect description.

However, just don’t expect a classic horror movie with jump scares and wild supernatural elements. If you do, this might be a disappointing watch, which would be a shame, since it’s a really strong movie!

Continue reading our Nanny movie review below. Find it in select theaters from November 23 – and on Prime Video from December 16, 2022.

Anna Diop is amazing in the lead

The story in Nanny  is very much character-driven, which in turn means the casting is even more important. Fortunately, Anna Diop ( Us , Titans ) is amazing as Aisha. Anna Diop is a Senegalese-American woman, who was born in Senegal, just as the character Aisha was.

MORE WITH ANNA DIOP Check out the horror fantasy The Keeping Hours starring Lee Pace and Carrie Coon >

Michelle Monaghan ( Echoes ) co-stars in a key role with less screen time, but much impact. She’s the mother of the child Aisha (Anna Diop) becomes the nanny of. The child, Rose, is portrayed by Rose Decker who you might recognize from Mare of Easttown . She’ll also be in the next season of Servant .

Other key characters are portrayed by actors such as Morgan Spector ( The Mist series ), Sinqua Walls ( Teen Wolf ), and the fierce Leslie Uggams ( Roots, Deadpool ).

Based on many true stories

In large part, the life experiences of the main character, Aisha, are inspired by the mother of the film’s writer and director. This is not about her in particular but inspired by the experiences she had.

Domestic labor comes in many forms and being a nanny is one of them. In that sense,  Nanny is just one woman’s story, but I hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of these stories. They are important beyond anything I can articulate here.

Their importance comes from the simple fact that those who are privileged enough to not have these experiences, need to acknowledge them!

Watch  Nanny in select theaters now or on Prime Video soon!

Nikyatu Jusu is the writer and director of Nanny which is an amazingly strong feature film. This is her feature film debut, but Nikyatu Jusu has already made several short films – including a segment of Two Sentence Horror Stories .

She made the season 2 episode “Only Child” , which I commented on as “a horror story more than a comment on society”. This time, it’s more of a balance and it’s very efficient!

Jason Blum is a producer of the movie via Blumhouse, which should tell you that this has more edge than what you might expect from the plot. With a runtime of 1 hour and 38 minutes, you’ll be experiencing a few months in the life of one woman. But she represents millions.

NANNY is out in select theaters on November 23, and then globally on Prime Video on December 16, 2022.

Director: Nikyatu Jusu Writer: Nikyatu Jusu Cast: Anna Diop, Michelle Monaghan, Sinqua Walls, Morgan Spector, Rose Decker, Leslie Uggams

In this psychological horror fable of displacement, Aisha (Anna Diop), a woman who recently emigrated from Senegal, is hired to care for the daughter of an affluent couple (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector) living in New York City. Haunted by the absence of the young son she left behind, Aisha hopes her new job will afford her the chance to bring him to the U.S., but becomes increasingly unsettled by the family’s volatile home life. As his arrival approaches, a violent presence begins to invade both her dreams and her reality, threatening the American dream she is painstakingly piecing together.

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About The Author

Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard

I write reviews and recaps on Heaven of Horror. And yes, it does happen that I find myself screaming, when watching a good horror movie. I love psychological horror, survival horror and kick-ass women. Also, I have a huge soft spot for a good horror-comedy. Oh yeah, and I absolutely HATE when animals are harmed in movies, so I will immediately think less of any movie, where animals are harmed for entertainment (even if the animals are just really good actors). Fortunately, horror doesn't use this nearly as much as comedy. And people assume horror lovers are the messed up ones. Go figure!

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Common sense media reviewers.

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 .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say
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There aren't any parent reviews yet. Be the first to review this title.

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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Scary Movies for Kids

Best horror movies.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

‘Nanny’ Isn’t Nearly as Scary as It Should Be

There are lots of themes and big ideas swirling in the new horror movie, but it fails where it counts: making you unsettled.

Nick Schager

Entertainment Critic

Courtesy of Prime Video

Multiple unnerving things happen to Senegalese nanny Aisha (Anna Diop) in Nanny , be it visions of creepy-crawly spiders and mishaps with knives, or run-ins with a mythical creature that promises damnation and/or rebirth.

Unfortunately, while those incidents may be scary for the young single mother, they’re infinitely less so for audiences of Nikyatu Jusu’s feature debut. Nanny doesn’t straddle the line between immigrant drama and supernatural nightmare as much as it refuses to commit to either one of those lanes. Perceptive about its domestic milieu but flat and obvious when it comes to terror, it’s the sort of work that strives to be “elevated horror”—and, in the process, winds up epitomizing much of what’s wrong with that genre approach .

Despite being produced by Blumhouse, Nanny (in theaters November 23; on Prime Video December 16) has no interest in seriously rattling the nerves. Instead, it employs familiar spooky maneuvers to create a mood of ominous portent and dread that’s in tune with the mindset of its protagonist. Aisha has left her homeland for a better life in New York, and she hopes to bring over her son Lamine (Jahleel Kamara) once she’s earned enough money.

To do that, she takes a job as the nanny for Rose (Rose Decker), a young Manhattanite whose mother, Amy (Michelle Monaghan), is an awkwardly friendly professional and whose father, Adam (Morgan Spector), is a war-correspondent photographer whose office is decorated with his snapshots—most prominently, one of a young Black firebrand screaming in defiant fury in front of a raging conflagration. Both these parents are more discontent than outward appearances imply, and that goes for Rose as well, a cheery girl with a disinterest in eating the healthy, prepackaged foods that neatly line her refrigerator’s shelves.

That problem is solved, somewhat covertly, when Rose proves intrigued by Aisha’s homemade Senegalese dishes, and they quickly form a close connection. While Adam is pleased about this, Amy instinctively views it as a threat to her maternal bond, and the ensuing friction is one of numerous ways that Nanny identifies and exploits modern household dynamics for suspense.

Contributing to that fraught atmosphere is the fact that Adam and Amy are far from lovey-dovey thanks to Adam’s lothario proclivities, which is contrasted by Aisha’s growing affair with Malik (Sinqua Walls), a compassionate apartment building employee that she begins dating.

Furthermore, Aisha’s adoration of Lamine—with whom she struggles to speak on the phone, and who seemingly harbors resentment about his mother’s absence and unfulfilled promises of reunion—is the opposite of Amy and Adam’s generally hands-off, unemotional method of parenting.

Nanny understands the multiple forces at play in this scenario, and heightens them by having Aisha gradually become more incensed over Amy’s failure to pay her on time and Adam’s faux-helpful responses to her concerns. Class and race are both unspoken factors that director Jusu nonetheless makes sure to highlight, via blooming lighting that accentuates Aisha’s dark skin color in this pristine white enclave.

Somewhere nestled inside Nanny is an intriguing examination of the ways in which immigrant child caregivers are at once welcomed into, and yet remain fundamentally apart from, the homes and families that hire them, and when it opts to navigate those corridors, Jusu’s film remains on reasonably solid ground.

Too often, however, Nanny pretends to be an actual horror film—something it most certainly is not, at least in terms of building and maintaining tension, implying legitimate danger, or conjuring memorably disturbing sights.

Aisha is introduced sleeping on and under a bed sheet that becomes coated in water, and slumbering states and aquatic motifs run rampant throughout the remainder of her ordeal. At a playground, Aisha thinks she sees Lamine standing in a sprinkler downpour. Rain cascades from the ceiling of the bedroom Aisha uses while staying overnight at Amy and Adam’s apartment. She’s plagued by flashes of herself curled up in a fetal position in a full bathtub. And she nearly drowns in a public pool, during which she’s visited by a Mami Wata, a mermaid-ish spirit that, like the “trickster” spider Anansi, is a figure from West African folklore that either wants to hurt her or divulge some wisdom she can’t quite discern.

The Mami Wata is explained by Malik’s psychic-witch grandmother (Leslie Uggams), and its presence further blurs the already fuzzy line between Aisha’s conscious and unconscious realities. Jusu, however, does nothing to make that haziness unsettling, telegraphing every pedestrian dream sequence and suggesting no genuine menace that could cause Aisha harm. Worse, Aisha’s waterlogged hallucinations, which are generally tangled up with Lamine, are glaring hints about the tragedy that awaits her, such that it’s impossible not to always be three steps ahead of the proceedings.

Diop successfully evokes Aisha’s sense of anguished displacement and her disgust at having to stomach exploitation for the sake of her son. Yet the character’s wannabe-foreboding encounters and calamities are leaden and never raise one’s heartrate—or, for that matter, complicate the film’s overarching portrait of dislocation and despair.

Nanny is too busy intellectualizing horrors to shock or surprise. Uggams’ character twice sees fit to expound upon the Mami Wata, but the monster—spied primarily in murky shadows—has scant personality and serves only a symbolic purpose that’s hammered home by a finale that races through the trauma to which it’s been building, as well as the rejuvenating happily-ever-after that follows in its wake.

Jusu treats Amy and Adam’s (and their upper-crust friends’) attitudes toward race in similarly hurried fashion, nodding to those issues so faintly that they fail to make an impact. The same can also be said about Monaghan’s performance as Amy, a two-dimensional workaholic whose difficulties at home and at the office—which, during an attempt at bonding with Aisha, are revealed to include misogynistic boys-club pressures—come across as half-baked.

Ultimately, Nanny raises a host of promising ideas but imparts little about any of them. All the while, it boasts considerable empathy for its protagonist, whose journey toward acceptance and healing requires navigating a landscape of major and minor infractions, but not many frights that might make her saga memorable.

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Nanny McPhee Parent Guide

Seven kids and seventeen nannies later, the widowed Mr. Brown is desperate to find an employee to care for his children. Suddenly, Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson -- who also penned the screenplay) shows up for the job.

Release date January 26, 2006

Run Time: 97 minutes

Get Content Details

The guide to our grades, parent movie review by kerry bennett.

To say the Brown children misbehave is an understatement of magnificent proportions. These seven motherless children are down right naughty.

Sneaking down to the kitchen, they whack the cook (Imelda Staunton) over the head with a frying pan before tying her up and ransacking the larder. They drive their seventeenth nanny screaming from the house after pretending to eat the baby, and one brother routinely decapitates dolls and teddy bears with his guillotine. The situation is so bad the local employment agency refuses to answer Mr. Brown’s (Colin Firth) inquiries for more help.

Given the challenge of a new victim, Simon (Thomas Sangster) and his siblings assume they can run off this hired help as easily as the others. They introduce themselves with bogus names (body parts and bathroom terminology), intending to rattle her. But Nanny McPhee, unruffled by their rude humor, insists on proper manners and uses her magical touch to enforce them. With firm but tender composure, she ensures the rowdy offspring experience the consequences of their choices

Knowing she can only stay as long as she is needed, Nanny McPhee promptly goes about establishing calm in the chaotic household by helping the children deal with the loss of their mother and their father’s lack of attention. When their stuffy and bossy Aunt Adelaide (Angela Lansbury) arrives for tea, she also helps the brood use their heads to solve a familial dilemma.

However, even she can’t interfere with matters of the heart. So when Mr. Brown—a mortician who talks to his deceased clients—presents Mrs. Quickly (Celia Imrie) as a possible stepmother, the children are left to their own devices to scare her off. Unfortunately, in an attempt to shield the bawdy widow from his children’s nasty pranks, the father’s actions are misconstrued as overt sexual advances.

In addition to playing the robust nursemaid, Emma Thompson penned the screenplay based on the Nurse Matilda series. Over and above the rambunctious progeny, her characters include two comical funeral assistants and Evangeline (Kelly Macdonald), a self-conscious scullery maid. While the outcome is predictable, the colorful sets and inevitable food fight will likely entertain older children.

Whether or not Nanny McPhee sparks another reading frenzy like Harry Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia , her insistence on civility and her corresponding kindness demonstrates it’s not necessarily bad to carry a big stick as long as you have an equally big heart.

About author

Kerry Bennett

Watch the trailer for nanny mcphee.

Nanny McPhee Rating & Content Info

Why is Nanny McPhee rated PG? Nanny McPhee is rated PG by the MPAA for mild thematic elements, some rude humor and brief language.

After his children pretend to eat the baby, Mr. Brown discovers his youngest child covered with gravy and vegetables in a roasting pan. Later the children replace Mrs. Quickly’s lunch items with wormy sandwiches and frog egg tea. They destroy the house by painting the piano keys and trashing the kitchen. In addition to their destructive behavior, they are also disobedient and rude. At the funeral home, Mr. Brown address dead bodies, which are shown lying on a table. While attempting to thwart his children’s pranks, Mr. Brown inadvertently falls on top of Mrs. Quickly and places his head on her bosom, which actions are mistaken as seeking for sexual favors.

Page last updated April 24, 2020

Nanny McPhee Parents' Guide

What deadline is Mr. Brown facing? How does that impact the way he interacts with his children? What changes when he lets his children in on his problem?

How does Nanny McPhee physically change during the movie? Can our perception of others’ beauty be affected by our feelings for them?

What sacrifices does Evangeline make for the family? What good things result from her decision?

Loved this movie? Try these books…

The most recent home video release of nanny mcphee movie is august 17, 2010. here are some details….

DVD Release Date: 12 May 2006

The caregiver who carries a big stick comes to DVD with more bonus features than Nanny McPhee has warts! They include audio commentaries with Director Kirk Jones and Children as well as Actor Emma Thompson and Producer Lindsay Doran, information about casting the children and village life, a Nanny McPhee makeover, deleted scenes, a gag reel, and a lesson on How Nanny McPhee Came to Be . Audio Tracks are available in English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1) and Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1), with subtitles in English, Spanish, French.

Blu-ray Notes: Nanny McPhee

Blu-ray Release Date: 17 August 2010

Nanny McPhee releases on Blu-ray with the following bonus extras:

- Feature commentary

- How Nanny McPhee Came to Be

- Casting the Children

- Village Life

- Nanny McPhee Makeover

- Deleted Scenes

Related home video titles:

This film is available for streaming. After two British children scare away yet another nanny, Mary Poppins arrives on their doorstep to set matter right in the Banks household. In The Sound of Music , a young woman from the convent is sent to care for seven rowdy children of Captain von Trapp after they get rid of their governess. Evil stepmothers are a common theme in fairytales including Cinderella and Snow White . This movie is followed up in 2010 by Nanny McPhee Returns.

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‘perfect nanny’ (‘chanson douce’): film review.

Karin Viard stars in French director Lucie Borleteau’s 'Perfect Nanny,' the adaptation of a prizewinning novel by Leïla Slimani that was inspired by a true story.

By Jordan Mintzer

Jordan Mintzer

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When a movie has a title like Perfect Nanny , you can be pretty sure that the eponymous character will be anything but perfect. In fact, you can be sure she’ll be the polar opposite of perfect — or that, as in this disturbing yet unconvincing French psychological thriller, she may do the one thing you wish a nanny would never do.

Based on Leïla Slimani’s Prix Goncourt-winning novel (whose original title, Chanson douce , or Lullaby , is more subtle and evocative), the film comes with a major spoiler alert that may make adequate reviewing difficult, especially since the book begins with the ending and then flashes back to the events leading up to it.

Here, director Lucie Borleteau ( Fidelio: Alice’s Odyssey ) tries to provide a more classically suspenseful telling whose finale, at least for those viewers who haven’t read the best-selling novel, may come as either a total shock or a total WTF. Truth be told, what happens in Perfect Nanny , which was inspired by a case that occurred in Manhattan back in 2012, is so unfathomable that it may be impossible to explain in a reasonable way.

Nevertheless, Borleteau and co-writers Jérémie Elkaïm and Maïwenn (both actors and directors as well) give it their best shot, depicting the devastating events that befall a 30-something couple when they decide to hire a nanny to help out with childcare. The couple in question, Myriam (Leïla Bekhti) and Paul (Antoine Reinartz), are your typical pair of Parisian bobos, with a comfy apartment on the Right Bank and two young children, toddler Adam, and 5-year-old Mila (Assya Da Silva), who are taking up all of Myriam’s time.

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After some deliberation, the couple decides to hold a casting session for nannies and soon end up with Louise (Karin Viard), a 50ish French woman with good credentials and a firm but loving hand with the children. She comes as a major relief at first, allowing Myriam to get back to work and also get closer to Paul, from whom she’s grown estranged under the weight of her kids. In an early montage, we learn that Louise not only cooks, cleans and makes morning coffee for the couple, but is a welcome presence in the lives of Adam and Mila, reading them stories, playing dress up and imitating a scary monster.

That Louise may, in fact, be the latter in real life is not all that surprising. The first time we meet her, she appears as a little too tightly wound, like the tiniest thing will make her go pop. Her attempts to be affable seem fake or forced. Played with icy aplomb by veteran Viard ( Polisse , Delicatessen ), Louise doesn’t seem right from the very start, with Borleteau and cameraman Alexis Kavyrchine ( Memoir of War ) framing her in isolated, medium close-ups that tend to accentuate her oddness.

One of the problems with Perfect Nanny is how much Myriam and Paul seem to be blind to Louise’s foibles, which begin when she reacts extremely poorly to their light criticism, then continue when she shows up earlier and earlier at their place in the morning, basically moving into the household and becoming the principal caregiver. Perhaps the idea is to show that the young couple, who have got their mojo back now that someone else is changing the diapers, is blind because they chose to be so. Why look a gift horse in the mouth, especially one who’s made their lives so much easier?

Borleteau, whether intentionally or not, winds up shifting the blame to Myriam and Paul for much of what comes after, showing them as way too self-involved to see what’s happening. Even at home, Myriam is constantly working on her laptop and barely acknowledges her kids. In one scene, she locks herself in the bedroom when Louise throws a birthday party for Mila and her friends. Meanwhile, Paul, who’s a music producer, is so obsessed with a new album that he has little time for anything else.

Because Myriam and Paul seem so aloof, by far the most touching character in Perfect Nanny is actually the nanny herself, at least until the closing five minutes. Borleteau portrays Louise as both the victim of a long and difficult life — we learn that her husband died and her 25-year-old daughter no longer talks to her; she lives in a ramshackle apartment somewhere in the distant suburbs of Paris — as well as the vulnerable employee of a family unaware of what they truly mean to her.

Possibly the strongest sequence in the film is the one where Myriam and Paul bring Louise along with them on a trip to the island of Formentera, letting her take care of the children while they rekindle their love life. She manages to fit in with them in her own way — as both part of the family and a complete outsider — and seems to be taking the first vacation in her entire life, basking in the sea and sun as if they finally belonged to her as well.

'Jealous' ('Jalouse'): Film Review

During such moments, Borleteau intriguingly explores the blurred lines that separate Louise from the people she works for, and how crossing such lines can cause major problems. After all, she spends way more time with the children than Myriam and Paul do, and seems to love them dearly, so how is it that she’s little more than hired labor?

While such questions are worth asking, especially at a time when many parents, either by choice or necessity, now have to work full-time to support two-income households, Perfect Nanny begins to slide off the rails when Louise starts sliding into madness. At that point, Borleteau reaches into the grab bag of horror movie tropes (Louise suddenly appears in doorways or windows; Louise loses Mila in the park; Louise pees in a plastic potty…wait, what?) as the score by Pierre Desprats ups the tension in predicable ways.

And so, what at first appeared as a rather nuanced look at questionable parenting and problematic nannying turns into something that feels almost too sinister, or even silly in a shlock horror kind of way, to be true — the catch, of course, being that the story is true. Other art house movies, such as Michael Haneke’s The Seventh Continent and Joachim Lafosse’s Our Children , have dealt with similar material but made it seem to come out of some sort of dark and burning fatality, as if the perpetrators were driven by forces beyond their control. In Perfect Nanny , the filmmakers attempt to justify Louise’s acts through psychology that never feels fully developed, with indicators and triggers that ultimately feel way too simplistic.

Still, for a good portion of the running time, Borleteau paints a fairly realistic portrait of a modern, middle-class urban couple trying to raise kids while pursuing active adult lives, pinpointing some of the difficulties that entails. Bekhti and Reinartz, however unlikable their characters may be, do a convincing job revealing the compromises that people like Myriam and Paul have to make, and how such compromises are never made easily. In the end, it seems they may have made one compromise too many, and the result is tragedy.

Production companies: Why Not Productions, Pan-Européenne Cast: Karin Viard, Leïla Bekhti, Antoine Reinartz, Assya Da Silva, Noëlle Renaoude, Rehad Mehal Director: Lucie Borleteau Screenwriters: Lucie Borleteau, Jérémie Elkaïm, Maïwenn, based on the novel by Leïla Slimani Producers: Pascal Caucheteux, Grégoire Sorlat, Philippe Godeau, Nathalie Gastaldo Godeau Director of photography: Alexis Kavyrchine Production designer: Samuel Deshors Costume designer: Dorothée Guiraud Editor: Laurence Briaud Composer: Pierre Desprats Casting director: Christel Baras Sales: StudioCanal

In French 110 minutes

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Nanny Reviews

The overall effect is more disquieting than frightening.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2023

By using layered storytelling and mystical visuals, Nikyatu Jusu blends horror and social issues to reimagine the American dream.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

At the end of the day, Nikyatu Jusu shows tremendous skill and braveness by tackling one of the most demanding filmmaking tasks one could possibly confront, while carrying her own unique voice along the way.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 23, 2023

It's a reminder to me of how African filmmaking has the most trenchant social commentary I've seen from anywhere in the world.

Full Review | Apr 21, 2023

Director Nikyatu Jusu’s haunting tale of immigrant sacrifice engulfs and beguiles.

Full Review | Mar 16, 2023

Anna Diop stars as a nanny in this Sundance award-winning horror thriller, blending supernatural elements with race and class tensions in a Manhattan household.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 20, 2023

Jusu establishes Nanny’s premise fairly early and subsequently spends most of her time laying out the devastating toll...

Full Review | Feb 16, 2023

To add cinematic spice, there are copious amounts of magic and visions. Viewers are left to sort out the truth from the deliberate alchemy.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 30, 2023

This film is both too positive and not horrible enough for most fans of horror movies, but that is precisely why I like it so much. Instead, it is subtle, iconoclastic and exquisitely crafted.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jan 27, 2023

Capitalism, hierarchy and racism make love unendurable. But love can also be a kind of resistance. The Nanny knows both that water drowns and that you can’t live without it.

Full Review | Jan 23, 2023

Jusu intricately weaved a tale that may be similar to other films, but not in its main character or her culture’s beliefs in mythical creatures being a significant component of Jusu’s storytelling.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jan 14, 2023

An eerie, dreamlike drama of cultural displacement, class exploitation, and mythic surrealism...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 6, 2023

...communicates in the most visceral possible way what it means for a young mother to leave her son behind and come to America to work so she can make enough money to bring him over to join her.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 2, 2023

Nanny rejects jump scares in favour of a uncomfortably tense atmosphere, one that slowly escalates and is reinforced by a powerfully distinctive visual style. Motherhood, exploitation and privilege are explored in an impressively confident first feature.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 2, 2023

The Nanny is very grounded in its approach to mental health and awareness. Where even when the add in African folklore & connection, this at its core is about how deal with trauma & how to overcome it for our future legacy

Full Review | Original Score: 8.5/10 | Dec 29, 2022

NANNY is a truly special first feature film by a gifted writer and director Nikyatu Jusu who has assembled a first-class horror film with so many artful touches. It balances the horror and beauty so well.

Full Review | Dec 28, 2022

Throughout most of the film, Nikyatu Jusu pendulates the story between the nightmarish and things missed... as if she was cooking something impossible to elucidate. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 28, 2022

Jusu ultimately stumbles by awkwardly shifting midstream into a thrill-free horror story, complete with waterlogged nightmares and visits by the Mami Wata. Sorry, not buying it. The only thing truly fearsome is Diop’s incredible talent.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Dec 28, 2022

In that limbo between fantasy and reality, hallucinations and dreamlike moments occur, causing distress to the protagonist. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 28, 2022

Proof that sometimes the most devastating and resonating horrors can come from what appear to be the most mundane and domestic of conceits, Nanny is one of the genre’s best of the last few years.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 21, 2022

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

There's just something not quite right when Bette Davis stars as an English nanny. And is her 10-year-old charge an emotionally disturbed murderer or just an insolent brat? There's just something not quite right when Bette Davis stars as an English nanny. And is her 10-year-old charge an emotionally disturbed murderer or just an insolent brat? There's just something not quite right when Bette Davis stars as an English nanny. And is her 10-year-old charge an emotionally disturbed murderer or just an insolent brat?

• Jimmy Sangster
• Marryam Modell
• Bette Davis
• Wendy Craig
• Jill Bennett
• 83 User reviews
• 53 Critic reviews

• Virginia Fane

• Bobbie Medman

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• Flower Seller
• (uncredited)
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• Trivia The last Hammer film to be made in black and white.
• Goofs In the scene where they put the doll into the bathtub to scare the nanny: When they first pick up the doll, it has blonde hair, then when they put it into the bathtub, it has black hair, then when the nanny finds it, it has blonde hair again. This is a technique that is repeated throughout the second half of the film, whenever the bathtub death is revisited by the characters.

Bobbie Medman : Who's that?

Joey Fane : Nanny.

Bobbie Medman : Nanny? What are you, some sort of baby?

Joey Fane : She takes care of my mom, she used to take care of me and my sister Susie, until Susie was killed.

Bobbie Medman : Killed?

Joey Fane : They blamed me and they sent me away to that place.

Bobbie Medman : Prison?

Joey Fane : Sort of.

Bobbie Medman : And did you kill her?

Joey Fane : Of course not.

• Connections Featured in Hammer: The Studio That Dripped Blood! (1987)
• Soundtracks Focus on Fame (uncredited) Music by Sam Fonteyn Brull Music Ltd

User reviews 83

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• Aug 2, 2011
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• What was that medicine that Aunt Pen was taking for her heart?
• January 20, 1966 (Italy)
• United Kingdom
• War es wirklich Mord?
• Wall Hall, Hertfordshire, England, UK (psychiatric hospital)
• Hammer Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $1,300,000 (estimated)

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 33 minutes
• Black and White

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Hollywood’s output of American immigrant plotlines is endless. Yet while many of them are no doubt empathetic films, they also contain a sense of distance. Whether it’s in a film’s decades-ago period or a focus on the external forces that other its characters, rather than their interiorities and inner thoughts, this particular subject of film can tend to focus on what happens to people, rather than sitting with them in the transient moments of everyday experiences. Nikyatu Jusu ’s debut feature “Nanny” takes the trials, pains, and pursuits of the American immigrant experience and forms a narrative deeply and vitally entrenched in the mind of its lead character. 

The film follows Aisha ( Anna Diop ), a Senegalese woman working as a nanny for a young girl, Rose ( Rose Decker ), the daughter of a rich white couple ( Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector ) in New York City. Having recently moved to America, Aisha is not only building a life for herself in a new country but also working to save the money to bring her young son overseas as well. There’s a poignant feeling of loss in the film, contrasted not by the gain of a new home, but the newness of one. 

“Nanny” is visually striking, especially in its use of color. Scenes of Aisha at her home, swathed in saturation and patterns, greatly oppose the cold, brutalist architecture of the couple’s apartment and the city around it. Her bright head scarves and occasional donning of traditional clothing are a signal of warmth, remembrance, and the culture she’s carried with her to the states. The lighting of the film renders Black skin beautifully, whether in its daylight scenes or punchy surrealist sequences. 

There’s a water motif that plays into the use of light and color beautifully, but if used more sparingly, would receive more appreciation. Water is irrevocably tied to Aisha’s state of mind as both a physical representation of distance and a conceptual metaphor for drowning, but these water-based sequences occur so often that by the third or fourth time their impact is diminished. With tighter editing and a stronger discerning hand, these moments would feel more like statements rather than crutches.

The film's horror elements feel not only hindered by budget but overall apathetic. "Nanny" has a great, atmospheric score, and it would have sufficed in building tension without the inclusion of poor-CGI moments that completely interrupt the film’s otherwise solid cinematography. If “Nanny” was less focused on checking the box of “horror” and instead just committed to its successful surrealist tone, it would have felt more seamless. Saving the horror elements for the latter part of a film is not an ineffective strategy, but in “Nanny” they feel noticeably out of place. The impression they leave is fleeting, and the majority of these moments feel thrown in or confused, much like the movie's organization.

“Nanny” never quite finds its track among its list of narrative events. Time jumps, mood shifts, and side characters are messily included and distract from the film’s central focus (and strength): Aisha. She is displaced and at the whim of many external factors but has shamelessness and unshaken confidence despite her social position. Aisha is unconcerned with how she is perceived, and never loses sight of herself, her son, her culture, or her goals, despite how persistent the couple is in making her life dependent on their own. Diop’s portrayal is versatile, moving, and powerful in its acuity. She absorbs the tide of the horror elements, not letting them wash over the impact she brings to their space.

But Jusu's script spends far too much time planting seeds of interest in characters that end up unfulfilled. We are teased by their interiorities, and “Nanny” often loosens its grip on Aisha to shallowly explore side characters that don’t deserve our interest. The film’s thesis is unquestionable, but its power is anchored in Aisha’s mind and heart. When it pivots from that center, every moment is spent waiting to return. 

“Nanny” is a somewhat-cohesive slice-of-life psychological horror film. While its horror elements and overall structure lack gratification, it's the woman at its center and the submergence into her spirit that make it a poignant, wonderfully personal character study.

Now playing in theaters and available on Prime Video on December 16th. 

Peyton Robinson

Peyton Robinson is critic and contributing writer at  RogerEbert.com . Her writing on film and television has also been featured at other online publications, like CinemaFemme and Jumpcut Online. Her long-held, formative passion for horror has been the kickstarter for her career in film journalism, but she also loves writing about cult movies and stories of the Black experience. 

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Something from tiffany's, marya e. gates, the swimmers, monica castillo, lady chatterley's lover, sheila o'malley, the inspection, matt zoller seitz, you resemble me, christy lemire, a wounded fawn, film credits, nanny (2022).

Rated R for some language and brief sexuality/nudity.

Anna Diop as Aisha

Michelle Monaghan as Amy

Sinqua Walls as Malik

Morgan Spector as Adam

Rose Decker as Rose

Leslie Uggams as Kathleen

• Nikyatu Jusu

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“People like me…. Are they ever forgiven?” 

Much like writer-director Lulu Wang ’s deeply personal feature debut, “ The Farewell ,” her follow-up for Prime Video, “Expats,” grapples with the intersection of grief, womanhood, and geographic displacement—what it’s like to feel loss so far away from home. This time, it’s in the form of a sprawling, gargantuan series that spans six episodes and six and a half hours of weeping, unrelenting grief. It’s a powerful but harrowing watch, an exercise in prestige-drama misery that’s best absorbed in small doses.

Set in a small community of affluent expats living in Hong Kong in 2014 (like the source material, Yasmin Y.K. Lee’s 2016 novel “Expatriates”), “Expats” branches its narrative along the impact of an apocalyptic family tragedy and the three women whose lives change the most as a result. Architect-turned-housewife Margaret ( Nicole Kidman ) is haunted by the year-long disappearance of her youngest boy, going about her days in a fog while she searches for any clue her child is alive. Her good friend and neighbor, Hilary ( Sarayu Blue ), an Indian-American expat, grapples with her flagging marriage to her husband ( Jack Huston ) amid infidelity and infertility. Then there’s Mercy ( Ji-young Yoo ), a Korean-American twentysomething working odd jobs in Hong Kong whose impulsive decisions lead to tragedy for both Margaret and Hilary.

Wang hides the specificities of that tragedy from us in the show’s first two episodes: picking up a year after the incident, all we know is hidden in Kidman’s dazed, autopilot shuffling through her life, the panic she feels when she thinks she sees a familiar face amid a group of identically-dressed caterers. The pall that falls over her husband’s ( Brian Tee ) birthday celebration, knowing it’s also the anniversary of their boy’s disappearance. It’s not till the end of episode 2—a flashback to the day in question—that we see exactly what happened and why Mercy may feel responsible.

While “The Farewell” leavened such heavy circumstances with a deep well of charming humor, there’s little of that to be found in “Expats.” Each of the main characters feels the weight of the world on their shoulders, compounded by the twin expectations of wealth and womanhood. Margaret is too dazed and obsessed with her loss to be a good mother to her children; Hilary’s quest to pursue a life of childless independence creates a wall between her and her husband. Young Mercy is still a child herself, still trying to figure out who she is and what she wants. She’s starved for purpose and wracked with guilt over what she’s done. 

It’s a trio of heartbreaking performances, led by Kidman, who imbues Margaret with the kind of glassy brittleness she’s long known for. Her Margaret shares a lot of DNA with Grace from “ The Others ” — a buttoned-up woman barely able to keep her grief from spilling out through her face. Her son’s disappearance has broken her, perhaps in irreparable ways. As good as Kidman is, though, “Expats” greatest surprises come with Blue’s acerbic, cynical turn as Hilary—a complicated, confrontational woman bristling against the familial expectations of Indian culture—and Yoo’s free-spirited, flighty Mercy. Kidman’s mastery of the form is well-documented, but “Expats” offers tremendous platforms for these two actresses: a stalwart supporting player for years and a fresh breakout star in the making.

But what sets “Expats” apart from the dozen other prestige streaming dramas about grief (seriously, throw a rock) is its deep well of cultural specificity, and the sensitivity with which Wang presents it. Director of Photography Anna Franquesa-Solano’s probing, curious lens captures both the working-class vibrancy of Hong Kong’s night markets and the cold, alienating modernism of the affluent expats. It’s a world of fancy parties and tight-knit rich folks, all navigating their Western guilt over the maids, cooks, and babysitters (whom Hilary euphemistically calls “helpers”) they hire to subsidize their lives of avarice. Fancy dinner parties clash with the budding pro-democracy protests of the Umbrella Movement, first seen only through TV reports then, through Mercy’s fling with a Korean girl, in living, dangerous color. 

That divide between the haves and have-nots is never more clearly articulated than in “Expats”’ fifth episode, a 96-minute detour into the lives of the servants we’ve seen largely in the background. Mostly Filipino, the domestic workers we see in the margins finally get to shine, as they spend their day off gossiping and pursuing their own interests. “We know everything about these people, things their closest friends don’t even know,” says one. 

This focus makes sense: they’re expatriates, too, after all. Margaret’s nanny Essie (Ruby Ruiz) is a woman torn between her loyalty to her grieving employers and her family back in the Philippines urging her to retire and come back home. Hilary’s “helper” Puri (a radiant Amelyn Pardenilla) finds herself performing emotional labor for her employer in the wake of her crumbling marriage. Honestly, the rest of the show feels like gilding the lily; “Expats” could have just been this, a feature-length film about these working-class women and the thin line between family member and employee they must walk.

Powerful as the show can be, at six hours, the slow-burn pace and tonal bleakness can take their toll if you’re binging this all at once. “Expats” is best experienced in the week-to-week cadence in which Amazon plans to roll this out. It’s a thorny, complicated, heavy story, carrying vast possibilities but promising no firm ground on which to center yourself. In other words, the liminal space of the expatriate.

All episodes screened for review. “Expats” streams on Prime Video starting January 26.

Clint Worthington

Clint Worthington is a Chicago-based film/TV critic and podcaster. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of  The Spool , as well as a Senior Staff Writer for  Consequence . He is also a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and Critics Choice Association. You can also find his byline at RogerEbert.com, Vulture, The Companion, FOX Digital, and elsewhere. 

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Nicole Kidman as Margaret

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Brian Tee as Clarke

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