Film Review — Nanny
★★★☆☆
A Senegalese immigrant takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy New York couple, but problems soon arise as she struggles to reunite with the son she left behind.
Promptly picked up by Amazon Studios following its success at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, Nikyatu Jusu’s feature-length debut is a breakthrough in a number of ways. Being the first horror film to scoop the prestigious festival’s top award, Nanny feels like the final solidification of the genre’s return as more than mere release fodder for the winter months.
But perhaps more importantly, it marks Jusu’s long-awaited emergence as a filmmaker whose output we should anticipate. Drawing on her own experiences observing the children of wealthy New York elites being raised by black women, Jusu has crafted a very different kind of horror.
There’s no boogeyman here. No haunted house with cannibal mutants lurking beneath the floorboards. No demon preparing to possess some little girl. Instead, the film’s slow-build horror is situational, tackling displacement, cultural division and tokenism. This might disappoint some hoping for something a little more conventional, but it’s still largely effective in getting under your skin.
Jusu floods her film with so many different ideas and imagery, but while it all looks gorgeous, it never quite comes together to form a cohesive experience. Instead, it feels wild, unfocused and ill-disciplined, feeling very much like the work of a 40-year-old making their first feature, terrified they won’t get a second chance. That second chance will come, don’t worry.
Recommended for anyone who enjoyed 2020’s excellent His House, Nanny is an intriguing but flawed horror/thriller that should go down well with fans of the genre, fans of Anna Diop — who is simply tremendous here — and anyone looking for a different perspective from an exciting new filmmaking eye.
Bonus points, too, for any film that finds a way to include Sampha in its soundtrack.
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