Prime Video to Stream Sundance Frightener

Prime Video will premiere a Sundance Film Festival first, the award-winning horror film Nanny, on December 16.

Dubbed a “psychological horror fable of displacement”, it stars US’ Anna Diop as a recent Senegalese emigrant in New York City who is hired to care for the daughter of an affluent couple (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector). Reads the blurb:

Haunted by the absence of the young son she left behind, she 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.

Here’s the media release:

Nanny is the haunting and award-winning debut feature from writer/director Nikyatu Jusu, starring Anna Diop (US), Michelle Monaghan (Mission: Impossible – Fallout), Sinqua Walls (American Soul), Morgan Spector (The Gilded Age), Rose Decker (Mare of Easttown) and Leslie Uggams (Deadpool).

It’s the first horror film to win the Sundance Film Festival Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and only the second time this honor has been bestowed upon a Black female director.

At its core, Nanny is a genre-bending film that blends psychological horror with culturally relevant issues of social identity, including race, gender, and socioeconomic status.

Set in New York City, this fable of a Senegalese immigrant’s experience working for an affluent family is grounded in the real life experiences of domestic workers.

The story is personal to Nikyatu Jusu’s upbringing, whose mother sustained her household with this occupation. Jusu incorporated spiritual genre elements that spoke to her lineage.