There seems to be a common thread in a lot of psychological thrillers – simply putting the main character into a place or situation that they wouldn’t normally be in. The fish-out-of-water scenario seems to be the perfect setup for something scary to happen. And that is exactly how Nanny, the new psychological thriller on Amazon starts their story.
Aisha is an immigrant from Senegal who is finding her way in New York. The disparities between her life and the ones of the family she works for are prominently on display. Aisha is working to bring her son to America and to give him a better life, but her work hours and constantly having to remind her employer to pay her, start to wear thin. When weird things and dreams start happening, Aisha doesn’t know just how weird things are getting in her life.
While the story focuses on dread, and the payoff isn’t exactly what you think – Nanny does one thing really well. It highlights beautifully the Senegalese culture and the immigrants in the movie. It embraces their culture and brings it into the story. It is a stark contrast from the cold, bare, and modern style of Aisha’s employers. From the colorful culture to a family that doesn’t allow their daughter to have anything with personality or flavor in her life – it’s interesting the difference between the worlds that Aisha has to traverse.
As things begin to fall apart around Aisha, her life in America is starting to become more permanent. Nanny, clearly shows how things can be going so well in one area while other parts are completely out of control. It focuses on the dread, and visions that Aisha keeps having and tries to highlight just how bad things are going – but it seems that it misses the mark just a little bit. Nanny takes its time getting to the actual crux of the story, and is a bit slow getting there. It relies heavily on the feeling of dread and unknowing of what is going on. But meanders its way into finding an ending – and one that will almost make sense to the storyline.
Nanny is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, and while it definitely has some redeeming factors, it doesn’t quite deliver on the thriller promise.
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About Nanny:
In this psychological horror fable of displacement, Aisha (Anna Diop), a woman who recently emigrated from Senegal, is hired to care for the daughter of an affluent couple (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector) living in New York City. Haunted by the absence of the young son she left behind, Aisha hopes her new job will afford her the chance to bring him to the U.S., but becomes increasingly unsettled by the family’s volatile home life. As his arrival approaches, a violent presence begins to invade both her dreams and her reality, threatening the American dream she is painstakingly piecing together.