The Man In My Basement (15)
Cast: Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe, Anna Diop, Jonathan AjayiGenre: Thriller
Author(s): Walter Mosley, Nadia Latif
Director: Nadia Latif
Release Date: 12/09/2025
Running Time: 114mins
Country: US
Year: 2025
Charles Blakey is on the brink of losing his ancestral home in Sag Harbor and he is desperate for any lifeline to turn his fortunes around. Mysterious businessman Anniston Bennet approaches Charles with an offer to rent his basement for the summer for $1000 a week. His money could help Charles to cling onto the property, which has been in the family for several generations. Once Anniston is installed below ground, events take a sinister turn.
LondonNet Film Review
The Man In My Basement (15) Film Review from LondonNet
If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. Logic and common sense shouldn’t be sacrificed at the altar of financial gain, but when times are tough and reality bites and leaves teeth marks, moral compasses can recalibrate true north to whoever wields money and power. Adapted by director Nadia Latif and Walter Mosley from the latter’s novel, The Man In My Basement is a teasing psychological thriller set in 1990s New York which establishes an uncomfortable master/servant power dynamic between a black homeowner, on the verge of foreclosure, and a wealthy white businessman who claims to make his money from “reclamations”…
A Faustian pact between the pair, weighted heavily in favour of one man, is sold as an easy seven-figure windfall in return for casual hospitality. As the script uncoils across two hours, like a snake roused from slumber after basking in the sun, Latif’s film gets lost in the dark of its philosophical musings about race relations and generational guilt, delivered by Willem Dafoe as meaty monologues. His on-screen pairing with Corey Hawkins as a cash-strapped son, who has recently lost his mother, energises a steady trickle of spoken exposition. The dramatic pay-off is insubstantial after the build-up and an intentional concealment of true motives.
Charles Blakey (Hawkins) is in dire financial straits after losing his job as a bank teller for allegedly stealing money from his drawer. He is poised to default on the house that has been in his family for eight generations in the historically African American community of Sag Harbour. The unemployed loner takes out his frustrations on good friends Ricky (Jonathan Ajayi) and Clarence (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr).
When all hope seems lost, enigmatic businessman Anniston Bennet (Dafoe) knocks at the front door with an intriguing offer: 1,000 dollars a day to take up temporary residence in Charles’s basement with a 10,000 dollars deposit up front to sweeten the deal. “Tell no-one of our agreement,” insists Anniston. Charles reluctantly accepts the proposal and is stunned when Anniston constructs a prison cell in the basement, where he intends to spend the next 65 days “reading, thinking, maybe writing” under the homeowner’s control. With cash sufficient to pay his debtors, Charles has time to reflect on a fractious relationship with his late uncle (Brian Bovell) and re-evaluate his assertion that he is “a good person with bad luck”.
The Man In My Basement flirts with ambiguity for an opening hour punctuated with creaking floorboards and ghostly apparitions, but Latif’s picture is like Anniston’s deal and flounders under close scrutiny. Hawkins and Dafoe are well-matched sparring partners, debating the complex nature of evil, and they illuminate scenes that cinematographer Ula Pontikos deliberates shrouds in gloom. A slow-burning and flawed character study shuffles out of the shadows.
– Sarah Lee
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Fri/Mon/Thu 17:00; Sat 14:20; Sun 20:00; Tue 14:00; Wed 16:40
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UK and Irish Cinemas Showing The Man In My Basement
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