Director Nikyatu Jusu’s haunting tale of immigrant sacrifice engulfs and beguiles.

| Mar 16, 2023

An eerie, dreamlike drama of cultural displacement, class exploitation, and mythic surrealism...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 6, 2023

The basic elements of Nanny have a lot of promise, but they’re not woven together very convincingly. Most of the tension arises from the portrayal of a very mundane nightmare.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 17, 2022

Nanny is a sensational directorial debut and one of the best horror films of 2022.

| Dec 16, 2022

The last act doesn’t quite live up to the status of future classic that the best of the movie promises, but still: Jusu is a serious talent with a sharp eye for things gone wrong.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 15, 2022

A singular vision that, even when its focus drifts, provides one woman’s worldview all the dignity it deserves — amid dementia she surely does not.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 12, 2022

For as unique of a perspective this movie offers, it feels like a woefully anonymous amalgamation of other vaguely artsy, genre-film-adjacent psychological thriller fare in its structure.

| Dec 1, 2022

[Diop] carries every scene with aplomb, and she’s rarely off-screen.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 1, 2022

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.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 1, 2022

The sort of work that strives to be “elevated horror”—and, in the process, winds up epitomizing much of what’s wrong with that genre approach.

| Nov 30, 2022

The mood that it sets is so much better than the actual script... [But] this is a great introduction [for writer-director Nikyatu Jusu].

| Nov 30, 2022

There's a lot of talent involved in this film... It's something of a mess narratively, but that can be easily pardoned.

| Nov 30, 2022

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.

| Nov 29, 2022

A film that surreptitiously sticks in your thoughts.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 28, 2022

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 25, 2022

While its horror elements and overall structure lack gratification, it's the woman at its center and the submergence into her spirit that make it a poignant, wonderfully personal character study.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 24, 2022

The film is an experience for the senses; you'll hold your breath as you're consumed.

| Nov 23, 2022

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.

| Nov 22, 2022

A work of compassion and unease heralding a thoughtful, genre-probing talent.

| Nov 22, 2022

It’d be better if “Nanny” leaned into its own ambiguousness and myth-making for its final act; there is no need for the film to be quite as literal as it winds up being.

| Nov 21, 2022