Critics reviews

Nanny is presented as a sharply focused gaze on Aisha, allowing the character to celebrate the richness of her life where Black joy and Black love are treated with valuable measure. The horror elements — never finding itself in positions of cheap thrills or scares — are bonuses.

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.

Nanny exists as a sobering exploration of the American Dream gone disgustingly sour...

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.

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.

As a feature debut, Jusu’s work is specific and thoughtful, and though its pacing leaves something to be desired, she has a strong sense of what propels a person through a bad job for a light at the end of the tunnel.

[A] creepy thread runs through a film that, at its heart, is really a wrenching drama about immigrant mothers, separated families, raising children and guilt.

The combination of sensitively handled character drama and slow-burning horror genre tropes builds into an intriguing tale of survival and empowerment with a standout central performance from Anna Diop.

An anguished update of, and response to, Ousmane Sembène’s 1965 anti-colonialist classic Black Girl, writer-director Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny grapples with the psychic pain of cultural alienation and familial disconnection.

oesn’t want to grant her audience respite with quick, cheap scares, but wholly envelop them in a perpetual nightmare underlining true horrors of the American Dream.

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.

Nanny juggles... Past, present, future, language, culture and horror together in a story about what happens when you don’t heed warnings. While it doesn’t address everything in a seamless way, the message is loud and clear.