MAN IN MY BASEMENT, THE
(director/writer: Nadia Latif; screenwriter: Walter Mosley, book by Mosley; cinematographer: Ula Pontikos; editor: Mark Towns; music: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe; cast: Willem Dafoe (Anniston Bennet), Corey Hawkins (Charles), Anna Diop (Narciss, antique dealer), Brian Bovell (Brent, Charles’s uncle), Mark Arnold (Wilson Ryder, construction boss), Jonathan Ajayi (Ricky, Charles’s friend), Pamela Nomvete (Irene. nosy neighbor), Kayla Meikle (Lainie, Charles’s cousin), Gershwyn Eustache Jnr.(Clarence Mayhew), Tamara Lawrence (Bethany, wannabe gf of Charles), Bret Jones (John Paterson, bank manager), Shellia Kennedy (peaches, Charles’ aunt), Lizzie Lomas (Extine), Miah Hasselbaink (Athalia); Runtime: 115; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Dave Bishop, Diane Houslin, John Giwa-Amu, Len Rowles; Hulu; 2025)
“Unsettling but misguided racial psychodrama.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
In her feature film debut Nadia Latif directs and co-writes with Walter Mosley this unsettling but misguided racial psychodrama adapted from Mosley’s 2004 novel. The guilt-trip story starts out as if it could be interesting but ultimately makes no sense and turns into a tedious slog.
The 30-something bachelor Charles (Corey Hawkins) is an unemployed Black man who in 1994 lives alone in a large house on Sag Harbor, New York, a Long Island middle-class suburb, in the house his family owned for eight generations that he inherited from his deceased widowed mom in 1985. He lives alone, has no job and is unable to pay the mortgage.
Charles cautiously accepts a generous but strange offer from a white stranger named Anniston Bennet (Willem Dafoe), a mysterious businessman investor from Greenwich, Connecticut, who knocks on his door and asks to rent his basement for two summer months (65 days) and wants to pay a thousand dollars a day to be locked in a cage without any visitors. He also doesn’t want anyone else to know he’s here. Charles doesn’t ask him why he wants to live in his basement like a prisoner, as he probably guesses he must have his reasons; that is, unless he’s nuts.
The two stars perform admirably well despite working with such shoddy material. The ambitious social conscience story lacks logic or being believable or being paced right. It turns into a chore to watch such balderdash. It passes as a horror pic with no scares, that’s in over its head when it can’t dig itself out of the cultural hole it dug for itself.
It played at the Toronto Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 12/11/2025 GRADE: C+
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