Last week, given February being Black History Month in the States and having also been until recently Women in Horror Month, I started seeking out horror films directed by Black women. I will say though, there are slim pickings – really very few to choose from, and though I’ve appreciated all that I’ve watched, there has consistently been a certain distance from the horror genre. Still, it has been an interesting project for me to target films thus and probably end up sampling some things I may not have otherwise chosen.
So, let’s keep moving forward and check out another two films this week. Again, these are first time watches and I don’t know how much there will be to say about them, so these may be shorter reviews and I will endeavor to avoid spoiling anything.
Nanny (2022)
As with the two films covered last week, this is also a feature debut for writer-director Nikyatu Jusu, and I think it is a lovely movie – warm, deeply felt, utterly culturally and personally specific, and really quite moving. However, given that this is a horror blog, I must say I don’t think it’s much of a “Horror” movie and I suspect it is ill served by the label. Still, on Prime (where it streams exclusively), it is listed as “horror-drama-suspense” and IMDB lists it as Drama – Horror, so we will dig into it here. I myself would have labeled it a Folklore Infused Magical Realist Drama (as if that’s a common genre on a streamer like Prime), and I think it is quite a good one. However, I fear that being marketed as a Horror film, from Blumhouse Studios no less (which releases a wide slate of popular horror every year), means that it will mostly be clicked on by people looking for, you know, a horror movie, who may be very disappointed, while an audience that could be more appreciative might not come across it. But hey, I found it this way, and if it hadn’t been listed as “Horror” I wouldn’t have watched it, so maybe I’m wrong.
We follow Aisha, a young woman from Senegal, working in New York City as a Nanny for a well-to-do couple. The work relationship initially feels good – respectful, warm, and considerate, but it isn’t long before they are expecting more from her than is reasonable, the husband is hitting on her, and on top of it all, they are stiffing her on her pay (and threatening her with legal trouble – given her undocumented status – when she complains). Somehow this clearly wealthy family (she is some kind of corporate executive who complains of how unfair her work situation is in the ‘boy’s club’ of the company to the Nanny she’s underpaying and he is a globe-trotting photographer who spends a lot of time in Africa and seems initially quite supportive, but there is a strong whiff of exploitation to his photos of African revolt, hardship, and poverty) is having what they perceive as hard times financially and are cutting corners where they know they can get away with it. But these are all minor irritations she’s willing to put up with if she can actually get her salary, send it home, and finally buy a ticket for her son (whom she hasn’t seen in a year) to join her in the States.
Aisha is wracked by emotions – guilt for having left her own child behind and instead giving so much attention to this rich couple’s little girl, discomfort with having so displaced herself and apprehension about doing the same to her son, hope that she’s actually building the two of them a better future, and the constant stress of trying to hold it all together. Mostly, she just keeps her nose down and pushes ahead, choosing rock solid self-confidence out of pure necessity, but you can see how it all wears on her, eating away at her resolve.
Perhaps this stress and guilt metastasizes into disturbing hallucinatory visions. Perhaps she is haunted by the folkloric spirits of Western Africa for her abandonment of her cultural home. Perhaps her strength of emotions have summoned these forces to help her. Perhaps she externalizes her inner turmoil through these folkloric figures of her childhood. Either way, strange things begin to happen while she’s at work. The shower seems to keep turning itself on. At the child’s swimming lesson, she’s pulled under by a kind of mermaid, Mami Wata. Sleeping in the room allotted for her, shadows of spider legs climb the walls and it’s implied that Anansi the Spider is involved in some wicked child-endangerment trickery. Her reflection is not her own. Many of these sequences could have existed inside a horror film (and I suppose on the strength of them, it is marketed as one), and I must admit that it did earn two genuine gasps from me (much to the entertainment of my wife who was working on the other side of the room while I watched this with my headphones on). But at the end of the day, I think they exist totally in service to the larger drama – which primarily feels tender and sad and gentle – more than adding up to a larger horrific feeling (though by the film’s conclusion, there are tragic revelations).
With heavy reliance on CGI effects, these sequences don’t always look their best, but the film in general is often beautifully filmed. Its particular color palette and saturation is striking and effective – often contrasting the warm, rich colors of Aisha’s wardrobe, home, and neighborhood, with the grey, modern sterility of the upscale apartment she works in. The film is very textural, building a story out of glass and stone and skin and fabric. And the sound design and scoring is rich and watery and fascinating – sometimes bringing an ominous sense to scenes in which nothing bad seems to have happened – yet – and keeping me watching the credits to the very end because I appreciated dwelling a bit longer in this space and letting the feelings of the film wash over me.
And there is a lot of feeling and a lot of nuance. There are so many small, well-observed moments: Aisha at a friend’s kid’s birthday party, struggling to relax and enjoy herself and flashing on visions of her own child having his next birthday without her, moments of kindness and loving solidarity with the woman at the money transfer office who’s so invested in her role in helping Aisha bring her son over, the hesitance with which Aisha allows herself to open up to Malik, the handsome and charming doorman at the building where she works, but also how uncomfortable she is about opening up in any way at all – like she can’t afford to relax, even for a moment – and if she does, if she lets herself be happy, maybe it feels like a betrayal of her son – leaving him behind to enjoy a new life without him. Many of these moments are small – it is a film that best thrives in the little, lived-in details – but as a whole, the film is rich in them, as it is also rich in its folkloric influences, drawing on figures like Anansi or Mami Wata without feeling the need to excessively explain them – they can just be there. Or not. Nothing is certain and the film isn’t interested in resolving those questions.
As with last week’s features, I feel that while anyone could have told this story with this nuance and this care, possibly no one else would have chosen to, and searching out films by a particular population has brought me characters and situations I wouldn’t have otherwise met. To be fair, Jusu is not an undocumented immigrant and this is not her story – she’s from Atlanta, though I’ve read her parents are from Sierra Leone. I don’t know what her childhood was or how it may or may not have informed this work, but I imagine her background feeds into it more than, for example, mine would have.
I really did like this film. I just wouldn’t generally call it “Horror.” But casting the widest possible net, “Horror” sometimes comes to include any contemporarily set story that features the supernatural, psychological turmoil, and/or the tragic, and something I love about the genre is that it can make room for such things that don’t really have another genre home, so I should probably stop harping on its classification and just be happy that such an interesting little picture has a place in the world.
Atlantics (2019)
So when I set out on this project last week, I hadn’t realized one other element that would tie together the films I’m watching. The fourth in a row now, this is another first time feature of a writer-director, and it is a confident, patient, unique little masterpiece. Again, I wouldn’t exactly call it a Horror film, but it does feature horror elements (ghosts, possession, something akin to zombies), and at least in this case, it isn’t actually marketed as one so much as a supernatural-romance-drama. But it first came on my radar praised by Elric Kane of the Colors of the Dark horror podcast, and based on that glowing recommendation, I feel justified including it here.
The other surprising through line I’ve stumbled into is Senegal. In Nanny, Aisha has emigrated from Senegal, leaving behind her son. In Atlantics, French-Senegalesewriter-director Mati Diop focuses on a group of women in Dakar, Senegal left behind when their boyfriends leave on a small boat, attempting to emigrate to Spain (also, just a few weeks ago, I wrote about Saloum, a Senegalese co-production – Senegal is apparently having a moment on this blog). I think it’s interesting how these are both tales of emigration (about the leaving) more than immigration (so typical in the American context), but whereas in Nanny, the one who left is haunted by who she’s left behind, in Atlantics, it is those left behind who find themselves haunted by the loss of these young men.
Specifically, we follow a young woman, Ada, whose lover, Souleiman, is among the group of guys who take the perilous ocean voyage after giving up on ever getting paid for a fancy hotel construction job (their boss owes them four months back wages and you don’t have the impression that he ever intends to pay). Working in the shadow of a modern skyscraper, these young men inhabit a totally different world. It feels crushingly unfair, but there is also a kind of solidarity between them as they demand their wages together, as they cram into the back of a pickup, singing songs on the road home to see their families and loved ones. Souleiman seems so weighed down, defeated, no song in his heart, and it is lovely seeing his friends patting him, rubbing his head, trying to lift him up into the group spirit. Not having seen each other for days because he’s been working, the two lovers meet up for an afternoon rendezvous by the sea, but Souleiman seems distracted, his eyes drawn to the waves. There’s a plan to meet up later that night, but when Ada and all of her girlfriends get to the club, they discover that all of the boys have left, and the bottom just drops out. The music is turned off as the young women process their grief.
This leaves Ada with little recourse but to follow through on her appointed marriage to an affluent man whom she does not love, Omar. Diop’s film never explains how she got connected to Omar, but it is clear that there is no love between them, and though her friends are all impressed with the wealth he offers, Ada keeps him at a distance. It feels like she had always been assuming she would be able to get out of it and make a life with Souleiman, but now that he’s gone, she’s stuck, and at her lively, colorful wedding ceremony, she seems to be going through the motions in a kind of a daze. At least until her marriage bed is mysteriously set ablaze, kicking off the more ghostly portion of the film.
Without going into too much detail, it does seem that the spirits of the boys have returned with a vengeance – to hound their former boss into handing over back pay to their families, and in Ada’s case, to sabotage this supposedly (but not really) joyful occasion and, to whatever degree it is possible, be with her again. In this, there are nice elements of ghostliness, of the mysterious. It isn’t filmed in a way to ‘be scary,’ but there is an emotional, unsettling quality to it all – it is literally ‘haunting’. When the boss is confronted in his home by a pack of white eyed women, all ridden by their former lovers to demand their due, it is threatening and uncanny. They are direct. They are unyielding. If horror involves the revelation of unbearable truth, this man’s responsibility for their loss surely qualifies. And their anger is all the more powerful for being so quiet, yet constant.
A detail I loved in the performance of Mama Beneta Sane (who plays Ada) is how steady and almost detached she is from her whole familial obligation to Omar. There is a sense in the film of the really unpleasant socio-political situation these women inhabit. Omar has a proprietary attitude towards her, and I doubt that’s uncommon. But she just doesn’t care. Not even a little bit. Her mother and grandmother criticize her for not speaking more sweetly to him, for not giving him a smile and keeping him happy, but she was out of this marriage before it ever happened. If she needs to just walk away, leave him, leave her family, get a job, crash with a friend, she will. And it’s all without drama, totally lacking in histrionics, because none of it matters. The one thing that she had loved is gone, and the degree to which she no longer gives a damn makes her surprisingly free, strong, independent. For a film that is so sad, she ends on a surprisingly liberated note.
Relatedly, the film strikes an interesting balance of tones and feelings. I will say, this is no action movie. You might even call it slow. There are no horror jump scares on offer. Not much happens and the dominant mood is one of waiting. We are waiting with the characters. Living on this coast, in a dusty world of unpaid salaries, unloving marriages, a police force that protects a rich developer but turns a blind eye to how he rips off his workers, and shiny new buildings to be inhabited by total strangers, they wait: for money they’ve earned, for the boys to come home from work (or to ever come home from sea), to sneak out of the house and go be young for an evening, and possibly to leave and not come back. And washing over it all is the static-like roar of the ocean. There are few moments in the film when we don’t hear it. At once that ocean feels like a way to the wide open world out there beyond all this, but also like a wall holding them where they are – impenetrable, dangerous, swallowing up their young men who attempt a life abroad. Only once, for a brief moment at the end, after a taste of romantic resolution, does it feel like a natural force that gives and supports life.
Living in Europe, the last ten years have featured plenty of discussion of ‘the Migrant Crisis,’ as so many, particularly from Northern Africa and the Middle East have been taking their lives into their hands and boarding small crafts, such as the one the boys take here, hoping to find better lives in a new context. There have been a lot of responses to this, some more welcoming than others (and some quite cold and racist); but even the most open and supportive generally frame this as a problem for European countries to deal with. Insofar as I’ve chosen these films to encounter different perspectives, it is refreshing to see people presented as individuals, not problems to be solved, and to have a glimpse of what they are leaving, why they would do so, and how those left behind are affected. And still, this is not just a social realist drama, presenting a difficult real-world situation. It is more than that. Mythic, tragic, languorous, romantic, and rich in ambivalence, Diop’s film is a deeply personal and therefore universal meditation on love and hope and loss and resilience. If you’re reading this blog looking for scary movies, it isn’t that. But if you’re looking for something really haunting and special, I do recommend this one – it’s currently streaming on Netflix.
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So this was another interesting pairing: both award winning films (Nanny at Sundance and Atlantics at Cannes) from first time writer-directors (both Black women with African parents) and both dealing with emigration in a very personal and emotional fashion. Both films draw on elements of folk belief and intimations of the supernatural, but neither really feels quite like horror. Rather, I would say that both feel more like a kind of Magical Realism – supernatural things happen – there are ghosts, or possessions, or spirits, or gods, and it can threaten, but it feels natural. It feels of the world of the characters, not merely an element of allegory to heighten the emotion of their stories, and certainly not there to terrify the viewer. And both films were very moving for me in different ways.
They may not exactly be “Horror,” but I wouldn’t have seen them if I hadn’t been seeking out “Horror” films from Black Female directors, and thus, I’m happy to call this little project a success. In these last two weeks, I watched things I wouldn’t have otherwise. I got to look through some different eyes. I saw four very interesting and worthwhile films that at least bear some relationship to my chosen genre even if they are far from textbook examples of it. I really appreciate how Horror, in its unique way, can help open up perspectives like this.
But it all does lead to an intriguing question of why there is so little to choose from (beyond the fact that there are comparatively few films directed by Black women in general – which seems obviously rooted in certain socioeconomic inequities). Few horror films at all, and so many of them low on the “horror.” To be fair, I didn’t give any attention to Nia DaCosta’s Candyman sequel/reboot (which is absolutely a horror film, though one that clearly has things to say about race in America) – to some extent because I’d already seen it and I wanted to focus on first time watches, and to some extent because I feel it’s so tied up in a nexus of elements besides the self-expression of the filmmaker – commercial pressures of being a sequel/reboot, deep love for the original film, and a kind of meta-commentary inherent in reclaiming a “Black” narrative which had originally been put on screen by a White British guy (whose idea it had been to move it to a Black American neighborhood in the first place – in the original short story, Candyman was White, it took place in London, and it dealt rather with British class issues). But maybe that all deserves its own post someday. For now, I’m quite satisfied with the four Horror-adjacent films that I got.
Still, next week, I’m gonna try to find something scary. 🙂