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1000 Women in Horror

by Hope Madden

Shudder has produced some fascinating and enlightening documentaries about the genre they serve. Both the film Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror and the series Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror shine overdue light on the history of films and filmmakers genre lovers need to know.

In that vein comes Donna Davies’s 1000 Women in Horror. The doc is written for the screen by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, on whose nonfiction book it’s based. Longtime film critic and genre expert, Heller-Nicholas contributed brilliantly to Alexandre O. Phillipe’s 2024 Texas Chain Saw Massacre doc Chain Reactions, as well as Kier-La Janisse’s 2021 doc Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. She knows her way around a horror documentary, is what I’m saying.

So does Davies, for that matter, whose 2009 TV doc Pretty Bloody: The Women of Horror swam similar waters.

The title is an intentional joke. As the film makes clear, women have been a driving creative force in horror films for more than a century. But the film doesn’t spend much time focusing on individual women as much as it does basic genre themes that relate to women: childbirth, the depiction of women on screen at different stages of their lives, and rape, for example.

We do hear from some powerful creators, though. Mary Harron (American Psycho), Nikyatu Jusu (Nanny), Jenn Wexler (The Sacrifice Game),Gigi Saul Guerrero (Bingo Hell) and loads more shed light on how women create and are reflected in horror cinema.

The interviews are sometimes fascinating and often ferocious. Kate Siegel expresses the conflict underlying childbirth in horror better than most could. Throughout, it’s such a joy to deconstruct certain tropes with women, to hear how these tropes—for better or worse—influenced these filmmakers.

A little more of a history lesson would have been appreciated. I’d love to have made myself a list of vintage horror and, more importantly, early pioneers to dig into after the film was through. But when I think of the number of documentaries on cinema I’ve seen over the decades that included solely the voices of men, having just one that asks the opinions of only women experts feels revolutionary in itself.

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Nanny

by Hope Madden

Senegalese transplant Aisha (a transfixing Anna Diop) cares for a little girl whose mother works too much and whose father is often away. Aisha’s care is tinged with her own deep well of sadness and guilt at handing the care of her own son Lamine over to a friend back in Senegal. But this job will allow her to finally pay for the flight to bring Lamine to NYC, and just in time for his birthday.

Writer/director Nikyatu Jusu’s feature debut employs fantastical elements, but her Nanny is never an outright horror film. Aisha’s visions, though thoroughly spooky and potentially dangerous, speak to the fear, powerlessness and profound sadness facing a woman forever making impossible choices, regardless of the country.

Jusu gives these folklore-rooted images purpose as Aisha awakens to the real nightmare that the American Dream so often becomes. As self-pitying employer Amy (Michelle Monaghan) works long hours to compete in a man’s world, she shorts Aisya’s pay while taking advantage of her time. Reuniting with Lamine feels less and less likely. Helplessness, hopelessness and anger grow.

Jusu’s lighthanded with true horror, a choice that benefits the film because its honesty is horror enough. Diop conveys more with a glance or a sigh than any scaly monster or hairy spider could ever display. Her command of this character’s melancholy and rage is extraordinary.

The addition of Leslie Uggams as Aisha’s love interest Malik’s (Singua Walls) grandmother introduces exposition and explanations that feel slightly forced, particularly compared to the nuance defining the rest of the film. But it’s a slight fault in an otherwise beautiful, devastating movie.

Like Jenna Cato Bass’s Good Madam, Nanny identifies the uneasy social structure that guarantees inequity, and all the accompanying horror it produces. Jusu’s tale sidesteps the true genre punch, though, which may leave some viewers unsatisfied. But, even for its diabolical sirens and eight-legged tricksters, it’s Nanny’s naked honesty that makes it so scary.