Senegalese immigrant Aisha (Us’ Anna Diop) arrives in New York City keen to work arduous to attain her goals—chief amongst them making sufficient cash to reunite along with her beloved son, who she needed to go away behind. But as we see in Nikyatu Jusu’s beautiful but chilling Nanny, sudden malevolence awaits in each supernatural and all-too-human methods.

As the title suggests, Aisha lands a coveted gig caring for Rose (Rose Decker), the younger daughter of prosperous Manhattanites Amy (The Craft: Legacy’s Michelle Monaghan) and Adam (Morgan Spector). “Jobs like this don’t fall from the sky,” a good friend warns her, and we see that Aisha is keen to place up with the bullshit that begins to seep in as time goes on, at the very least till the couple falls behind on paying her the wage (together with copious extra time) that she’s desperately relying on. At that time, Amy’s control-freak tendencies and Adam’s boundary-pushing—and their fondness for utilizing Aisha as a go-between of their clearly strained marriage—develop into virtually an excessive amount of to take.

Thankfully, regardless of her poisonous mother and father, Rose is a playful child who rapidly warms to Aisha—even preferring Aisha’s spicy Senegalese meals to the tasteless meals Amy parcels out for her to eat. Another shiny spot comes within the type of Malik (Sinqua Walls), a genuinely good single dad Aisha begins courting after some nervous hesitation, and who comes with a bonus: a grandmother (Deadpool’s Leslie Uggams) with intuitive powers that show worthwhile when Aisha’s world begins to crumble.

Job stress is a major a part of what causes Aisha’s psychological pressure, however a good larger perpetrator is the torment she feels over her son, Lamine (Jahleel Kamara). She’d meant to maneuver him to America in time to rejoice his seventh birthday, and the boy’s annoyance along with her stalling—mandatory attributable to her monetary scenario—is nearly as irritating as how tough it’s to truly get in contact with him: dropped calls and missed calls abound, as do worrisome intervals of Aisha’s cousin, who’s been caring for Lamine, merely being unreachable.

We study just a bit bit about Aisha’s backstory—again in Senegal, she was a trainer, which makes good sense once you see how affected person she is with Rose; additionally, Lamine’s father was a married man who minimize her off when she bought pregnant, which explains Aisha’s preliminary reluctance to become involved with Malik. But we don’t must know extra, since Aisha’s character is stuffed in completely by Diop’s nuanced, emotionally layered efficiency. She’s resilient, she’s hopeful, she’s glad she left Senegal—however she additionally feels deep regrets and searing guilt over being away from Lamine, who she calls her “greatest work,” for thus lengthy.

As Nanny’s sinister music and ominous lighting sign from the beginning, extra horrific components are imminent—issues that go far past Amy’s “forgetting” what she owes Aisha for in a single day babysitting, or the all-seeing nanny-cams that flash from strategic nooks across the couple’s posh condominium. Aisha’s anguish over leaving Lamine begins to manifest in nightmares and visions that writer-director Jusu ties into West African folklore, drawing in figures just like the mermaid Mami Wata and the trickster Anansi.

It turns into so distressing that Aisha turns to Malik’s grandmother, who reminds her that “Mami Wata and Anansi are figures of survival and resistance for oppressed people… they challenge the dominant order, subverting it through chaos, anarchy, subversive energy.” So, although they’re scary, these aren’t essentially unhealthy visions. But the older girl additionally passes alongside a light however agency warning, noting that it’s not all the time about what the spirits need from you, it’s what they need for you—and their intentions aren’t all the time variety, one thing she needed to study the arduous method from her family trauma. Though there’s a hazard of leaning too arduous into metaphor right here, Nanny is so deftly crafted and fantastically carried out it by no means feels heavy-handed. Like the wonderful His House earlier than it—a movie about South Sudanese refugees who understand their new house in England is haunted by the terrors they left behind—Nanny chillingly illustrates simply how nicely the immigrant expertise can dovetail with horror themes, and the way even essentially the most optimistic pursuit of a brighter future can typically imply paying a darkish value.

Nanny hits theaters immediately, after which arrives on Prime Video December 16.

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