Sundance review: 'Nanny' mixes reality and mythology for a dark thriller of an immigrant mother watching someone else's child

Mythology and motherhood collide in “Nanny,” a gorgeously rendered and chilling psychological thriller that asks “Who’s watching the children?”

The title character is Aisha (played by Anna Diop, from DC’s “Titans”), an undocumented Senegalese immigrant who takes a job as nanny for a well-off Manhattan couple, Amy (Michelle Monaghan) and Adam (Morgan Spector). Their little girl, Rose (Rose Decker), hits it off with Aisha immediately — Aisha’s Senegalese food is tastier than the bland stuff Amy orders from Whole Foods or wherever. But Aisha witnesses that the marriage is fractured, with Adam away covering uprisings around the world and Amy trying to get promoted in her company.

Aisha doesn’t have time to worry about her bosses’ problems, though. She’s trying to earn as much money as she can to send to Dakar, so she can bring her 6-year-old son to America. Aisha also starts up a romance with Malik (Sinqua Walls), the doorman in the family’s building.

While Aisha is occupied with thoughts of Malik and making sure Amy pays her properly, she also starts having nightmares — visions of water and evil mermaids and the spider trickster Ananzi. She tries talking these out with Malik’s grandmother Kathleen (Leslie Uggams), who’s rather attuned to the spirit world. The spirits, Kathleen says, “bless us with resilience. But the spirits’ tools are not always kind.”

Writer-director Nikyatu Jusu neatly blurs the lines of reality and myth for Aisha, until she’s not entirely sure what’s up or down. Employing a rich color palette and disorienting set design for Amy and Adam’s apartment — big props to cinematographer Rina Yang and production designer Jonathan Guggenheim — Jusu makes space for Diop to take the character to the edge of madness and back.

——

‘Nanny’

★★★1/2

Premiered Saturday, January 22, in the U.S. Dramatic competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again on the festival portal, Monday, January 24, for a 24-hour window starting at 8 a.m. Not rated, probably R for violence, bloodshed, nudity and a sex scene. Running time: 98 minutes.