Whether you want to or not, Nanny will force you to slow down.
In this beautiful and twisted horror story, West-African immigrant and nanny Aisha (the riveting Anna Diop) is hired by a wealthy white couple, Amy and Adam (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector), whose relationship is awkward enough to make you squirm in your seat. While she cares for their young, mischievous daughter, Rose (Rose Decker), hoping to earn enough to bring her son, Lamine (Jahleel Kamara), to the U.S., Aisha is haunted by intense visions that rattle her consciousness and distort the ‘American Dream’ she had in mind.
With its stunning imagery and textured shots, it’s easy to get lost in the cinematic world director/producer Nikyatu Jusu expertly crafts in Nanny. But as you become absorbed in this dreamy landscape, even deeper layers and allegories unfold. Don’t drown in wonder. Let’s dive into this movie’s melancholic, luminous, and shocking ending to explore what it all means.
Let’s talk Mami Wata and Anansi the Spider.
Credit: Amazon Studios
Mami Wata and Anansi the Spider make a splash in Nanny as the hidden figures that guide Aisha on her rocky journey. Mami Wata, an indigenous West-African water spirit, is a guiding ancestral force throughout the African diaspora most respected for her ability to give fortune and to destroy. Her presence in the film serves to champion the sacred nature of water, making a continuous appearance in Aisha’s dreams and fantasies.
Anansi is portrayed throughout African folktales as a clever trickster; his stories are oftentimes warnings to stay ahead of the current, never letting it undertake you. Blurring the lines of reality and fantasy, the spiritual figures make it their mission to communicate with Aisha through various forms as she attempts to multitask her heavy workload with her spirituality. These two whimsical yet cunning forces stealthily steal the show without garnering much attention as they rapidly sweep Aisha into a stream of psychological displacement.
What do the water and rain imagery mean?
Credit: Amazon Studios
As Aisha begins to spend more time within her client’s posh New York home, it’s evident that the residence is a space of discomfort, not fortitude.
Viewers might notice the shifting palette of Aisha’s wardrobe as she moves from work to free time. When partying with friends in Harlem, she sports bright yellows and oranges. But within the sprawling Upper West Side apartment of her wealthy, entitled employers, she sticks to dull pigments and hues of blue. Aisha’s outfit choices convey either a sense of belonging and joy or exile and oppression. As Amy and Adam take advantage of Aisha’s labor through volatile passive-aggressive attacks on her culture, financial negligence, and even sexual harassment, the highly-driven nanny gradually loses her grip on reality, slipping into multiple states of consciousness.
You’ll need to be trained in self-defence if you want a shot at this £100K-a-year nanny job
Rainwater becomes recurring imagery in the film, hitting in light showers, threatening flooding, and hallucinations of drowning, all of which chip away at Aisha’s mental state. These dreams start subtle, serving as an entry-level warning from Mami Wata and Anansi for Aisha to get her head back in the game.
As the nightmarish visions begin to leak into her waking life, it becomes increasingly difficult for the protagonist — and us — to determine what’s real. The soft drips lead to hauntings of extreme waterboarding that completely take Aisha under the current. The climactic break comes to a silencing halt when Aisha breaks out of her hallucinatory state wielding a knife towards little Rose, who shivers in a bathtub. Though Aisha breaks from this spell before hurting the girl, both are left rattled.
The physical warnings are later revealed by Aisha’s love interest’s grandmother, Kathleen (Leslie Uggams), who specializes in supernatural spirits. The stakes rise for Aisha to take hold of her bearings within the presence of the delinquent parental figures she works for. But it’s clear that Mami Wata has suppressed patience for long enough, forcing Aisha to finally listen to her ancestral guides once and for all in the gruesome final act.
So, what’s the real horror in the movie?
Credit: Amazon Studios
Finally having collected enough to bring Lamine to America, Aisha sends for her son and his caretaker in Senegal. However, their reunion is thwarted by news that the boy has tragically drowned. Lamine’s drowning is one of the last warnings from Mami Wata to Aisha, the wake-up call for the Nanny protagonist to finally get her head above the water and assess her position within society. After constant antagonizing from her employers with limited pushback from Aisha, she must endure the ultimate tragedy to break this cycle of complacency and rise above her circumstances.
Of course, this staggering revelation shatters Aisha. In the end, viewers get a glimpse into her future with a melancholic — but not dispirited — montage that foreshadows remnants of hope for days to come. The weightless ending feels thematically separate from the horror of Lamine’s death. The dichotomous events suggest that Lamine’s death is not where the film’s horror finally resides. Rather, a deeper and more allegorical theme is to be pulled from the perfectly paced inciting events.
What does Nanny‘s ending mean?
Credit: Amazon Studios
It’s easy to pass off the asinine duo of Amy and Adam as an annoying obstacle in Aisha’s journey. But their presence is more chasmic than they seem. The couple struggle against one another, their dysfunction bleeding into Aisha’s work caring for Rose. Taking into account the separate horrors that the couple commits upon Aisha’s personhood while exploiting her lack of socioeconomic status in the American labor sphere, these two become the movie’s modern monsters. So, the villain here is not Mami Wata and Anansi, as it might appear at first glance.
Amy and Adam embody the plethora of systemic oppressions immigrant women face in the workforce and social realms as they navigate notions of promised American life. Jusu creatively depicts what mind and body horrors can occur when facing oppression and neglect from violent patriarchy, faux-feminism, and capitalist society.
Even with all of the supernatural aspects that make Nanny pop with suspense, Jusu forces us to examine human beings and their oppressive natures as equally horrific as the ghoulish boogeyman figure. Aisha’s intersectionality as a Senegalese immigrant and single Black mother situates her in the hot seat of American societal neglect.
Nanny’s ending shines a pessimistic — and absolutely necessary — narrative to combat the unrealistic depiction of American excellence conveyed to foreigners. It’s apparent that the ‘American Dream’ only applies to a slim community, not just any ‘ole doe-eyed dreamer as most might believe. Sitting in very real and undervalued circumstances, the horrors of exclusivity and exploitation absolutely should be evaluated in this film just as the atrocities committed in slashers are.
The buoyant paranoia and suspense of Nanny will have you drowning in sorrow without question, but this ending explainer should make it easier to swim to the shore!
Nanny is now showing in cinemas and is streaming on Prime Video globally on Dec. 16.
