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Nanny (13+, 99mins) Directed by Nikatu Jusu ****½
Jobs like this don’t fall from the sky every day.
At least, that’s what Aisha (Anna Diop) keeps telling herself, even as her new employer’s requests get increasingly demanding and the money she’s owed piles up.
However, nannying for a family in an affluent apartment on New York’s Upper East Side is certainly not without its benefits – and her young charge Rose (Rose Decker) couldn’t be sweeter.
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It’s just that she comes with a binder full of instructions from mother Amy (Michelle Monaghan), who is also consistently late – frustratingly both physically and with payments.
“It might be a little bumpy at the beginning, but you’ll catch your stride,” Amy had both, perhaps ominously, warned – and assured her – at the outset.
Husband Adan (Morgan Spector), who didn’t even know Aisha had been hired until her met her, tries to make up for Amy’s less-desirable traits as a boss, but, as Aisha, quickly learns, he comes with his own baggage and possible expectations.
So as she becomes progressively dissatisfied – and more than a little sleep-deprived – Aisha consoles herself that she’s doing all of this for her own progeny – her beloved six-year-old Lamine (Jahleel Kamara). Leaving him behind in Senegal had been a wrench, but she knew she needed to establish her life in America before they could be together again.
Now, if she can just stick it out for a few more weeks, Aisha may finally have enough money to feel she can send word for him to make the journey.
Nanny debuted at January’s Sundance Film Festival, picking up the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Feature.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Feature at January’s Sundance Film Festival, Sierra Leonean-American film-maker Nikatu Jusu’s feature debut was the first horror to take home the award.
Stylishly put together and pitch-perfectly paced, it has echoes and traces of everything from Rosemary’s Baby to The Babadook, as Aisha is plagued by nightmarish visions that may or may not be fuelled by all-to-real fears. A tentative relationship with the apartment building’s doorman Malik (Sinqua Walls) introduces some real joy into her life, but is also tempered by the striking resemblance of his son Bishop (Jamier Williams) to her Lamine.
Thanks to a stunning performance by Diop (Us, 24: Legacy), as well as the great use of the opulent setting and other visual flourishes, the audience is never quite sure is to what’s reality and what’s more the product of Aisha’s increasingly fraught situation and desperation to be reunited with her boy. And, as her emotions start to rule over logic, Nanny then begins to ask the question as to whether rage could be her superpower – or her kryptonite?
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.
Nanny is now available to stream on Prime Video.
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