Aisha (Anna Diop), an immigrant from Senegal, lives in New York City and gets hired to work as a nanny for the daughter, Rose (Rose Decker), of a wealthy couple, Adam (Morgan Spector) and Amy (Michelle Monaghan). She sends money to her young son in Senegal and hopes to be able to bring him the U.S. She develops a romance with a doorman, Malik (Sinqua Walls), and deals with tensions that arrise between her and Rose's parents when they're behind on paying her what they owe her. Meanwhile, she experiences strange visions.

      TThe screenplay by writer/director Nikyatu Jusu combines psychological horror, mystery, drama, social commentary and romance with mixed results. It walks a fine line between fantasy and reality as Aisha's visuals become increasingly intense and bizarre. Is it all in her head or is there something supernatural going on? Nanny tackles a lot of subplots some of which are handled better than others. There's the relationship between Aisha and Rose, Aisha and Malik, Aisha and Rose's parents, and then the stale marriage between Adam and Amy. Jusu does a fine job of incorporating just the right amount of exposition about Aisha's life back in Senegal to keep you at the edge of your seat for the first hour, but around the hour mark, it's easy to figure out what the "big reveal" will be, so when it does finally arrive, it's not very surprising. The introduction of a new character, Malik's mother, seems like she's just there to move the plot forward and isn't a well-developed character either. However, at least most of Nanny manages to be moving while allowing the audience to get inside Aisha's head. She's going through a lot and has a lot of emotions to process, especially when Adam makes the moves on her when they're alone. That said, Nanny teases the audience too much with dream sequences that quickly become tedious, so there's not much subtlety when it comes to that. How many silhouettes of a spider does the audience need to see? What's the point of Aisha swallowing a spider in her sleep? If you have arachnophobia, you'll find that scene to be more terrifying and disgusting, but even if you don't it's a scene that makes very little sense even in retrospect. There's enough tension within the drama itself, so the horror scenes make the film feel overwrought and convoluted.  

      Nanny has two major strengths that stand out: Anna Diop's breakthrough performance and the visually stylish cinematography. Anna Diop helps tremendously to provide the film with poignancy, so Nanny's emotional depth comes from her performance, not from the screenplay. Then there's the use of lighting, camera angles, color and sound design which add both style and substance while making the more cinematic. It's as visually stunning and poetic as the cinematography in the far more powerful and haunting Waves which shares a few themes in common with Nanny, so it would make for a great double feature. At a running time of 1 hour and 38 minutes, Nanny is visually stunning, suspenseful and engrossing, but tedious, heavy-handed and overwrought.