It really is nice seeing horror movies getting the praise they deserve. Nanny joins titles like His House and The Conjuring 2, which have all been featured in our movie of the day recommendations for their high Rotten Tomatoes ratings, which makes them contenders for our best Prime Video movies list. Streaming services seem to have upped their horror recommendations, and long may it continue.
Nanny won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, making it the first horror film to ever win this award. It’s especially impressive that Nanny was the feature-length debut for writer-director Nikyatu Jusu. The director has made a big first impression and I hope she continues to deliver psychological horror hits further down the line, because this one really delivered and is worthy of a spot in our best horror movies guide.
In Nanny, protagonist Aisha works as a (you guessed it) nanny in New York City, for a wealthy white couple who live on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Aisha is hoping to earn enough money to bring her son and cousin over from Senegal. During her time working for the family, she becomes very close to Rose, the young girl she cares for.
But she starts seeing some terrifying visions while working in the apartment, and soon starts fearing for the safety of both herself and Rose, and this is where things really start to get interesting.
An award-winning debut
Critics were impressed with Nanny, giving it a 90% average score based on 144 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with many praising the lead performance by Anna Diop, as well as the overall themes that formed the root cause of the horror.
Matthew Jackson at The AV Club said: “Nanny rises to become an unsettling, darkly gorgeous meditation on the immigrant experience, West African folklore, and the forces which drive one woman to keep fighting.”
“Nanny starts as a movie about a reality that we’d rather not face and ends as a movie about reality that we cannot bear. That is the horror of it – and, in Jusu’s hands, the galvanizing thrill,” K. Austin Collins wrote in Rolling Stone.
While Kelechi Ehenulo’s four-star review in Empire Magazine added: “The ideas don’t always cohesively fall into place, but Diop’s nuanced performance and Jusu’s sublime direction make this a compelling entry in the horror genre.”
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lucy.buglass@futurenet.com (Lucy Buglass)
