Think about you are in determined want of cash. Your mortgage is overdue, and foreclosures is closing in. You may’t get a job, and calling family and friends for a mortgage is getting you nowhere however despised. Then, a person reveals up at your entrance door, providing the answer to your issues — an nearly obscene amount of money. There’s only one catch. Effectively, two: He needs to stay in your basement for a few months, and he seems like Willem Dafoe.
Contemplating all of the wild roles this rightfully celebrated American actor has performed — from a deranged lighthouse keeper, to a gender-bending detective, to Spider-Man supervillain the Inexperienced Goblin, to Jesus himself — that face alone is motive sufficient for audiences to thrill. The chances are limitless for what Dafoe may carry to the display screen. However with him comes loads of motive to fret for the hero of The Man in My Basement.
What follows is a mix of haunted home tropes, psychological horror, and religious debate that makes this thriller daring however not at all times profitable. Nonetheless, it’s going to go away audiences with haunting questions on what’s on the market and what cannot be purchased.
The Man in My Basement delivers on its promise with star energy.
Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins co-star in “The Man in My Basement.”
Credit score: Andscape/Hulu
In her directorial debut function, filmmaker Nadia Latif adapts Walter Mosley’s novel The Man in My Basement, with the writer himself as her co-writer. And he or she kicks off her movie with eager casting. Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton) and Willem Dafoe co-star in The Man in My Basement, with the previous taking part in Charles Blakey, a Sag Harbor native who did the school factor however didn’t launch. So now, whereas his friends personal houses, function companies, and get engaged, he’s again in his late mom’s home, unemployed, sad, and alone. Effectively, nearly alone. There are unusual thumping sounds coming from upstairs. After which there’s the person at his entrance door, and he is aware of a suspicious quantity about Charles’ basement.
With a gleaming sense of entitlement, Anniston Bennet (Dafoe) is a white businessman who’s immediately a worrisome omen, providing a satan’s discount. What would he be as much as on this Black man’s basement? He is evasive on that query. However as the 2 share Charles’ household dwelling over the course of a number of pivotal weeks, solutions will come out, and heinous secrets and techniques can be unveiled.
The Man in My Basement is a slow-burning haunted home story.
Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins co-star in “The Man in My Basement.”
Credit score: Andscape / Hulu
Regardless of the nice and cozy woods and golden stained glass home windows that make this eighth-generation dwelling a marvel, Latif employs gothic components of psychological terror and restrained spooky visuals to make her home suitably scary. A bump within the night time right here, a strolling disembodied voice there, and even a straining hand crawling slowly in the direction of the haunted house owner will brew suspense. However that is all upstairs. Down within the basement, Bennet is in a cage.
Mashable High Tales
Whereas Latif makes use of the acquainted iconography of ghost motion pictures to create an eerie environment, her film stands out within the basement bits. There, Bennet has imprisoned himself, decided to pay for crimes he will not instantly confess. In the meantime, Charles is understandably freaked out by this employment of his dwelling. A battle of wills ensues as these two males face off over what might be redeemed and what must be paid.
In these scenes, Hawkins stands as much as Dafoe with an vitality ardent however nervous, whereas the four-time Academy Award nominee’s mysterious antagonist is eerily calm. The 2 talk about philosophy, historical past, morals, and race relations in sequences that really feel like they’re lifted from a stage play, grounded on this area of the basement, relying on the supply of dialogue over visible storytelling. That is at instances compelling, maybe supposed to play just like the gnarly conversations between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling of The Silence of the Lambs. Nonetheless, Latif will not ship the gore or overt horror such a comparability may counsel.
Latif pulls from Poltergeist, aside from this one factor.
The Man in My Basement gives environment and dramatic stress, however little in the best way of bone-rattling scares. Within the custom of gothic horror, Latif probes the psychological isolation Charles feels as a Black man who’s fallen in need of the expectations his proud household and sturdy Sag Harbor group had for him. However there are components of extra graphic ghost tales, like Poltergeist, in right here too. Particularly, Latif provides her personal spin on the skin-peeling gag earlier than a mirror, and like Carol Anne, Charles receives messages from the useless by means of his TV. (Right here is the uncommon place the place onscreen violence performs out…actually onscreen, which whereas unnerving, additionally creates a distance between the protagonist and the horrors.)
Nonetheless, Latif rejects a climax with the type of scary spectacle audiences of ghost motion pictures or psychological thrillers may properly count on. The showdown between Charles and Bennet is certainly one of phrases, not violence, and whereas that is consistent with the philosophical components of Mosley’s novel, it feels undercooked with different themes involving Charles’ household being reduce. Or maybe the visible allusions to a lot scarier motion pictures units up an expectation that Latif both cannot or will not fulfill.
As a substitute, the ending performs finest because the chin-scratching conclusion of a character-driven drama, which is what The Man in My Basement seems like when Charles will get away from his haunted home and out into his group. Combatting his personal loneliness with dates with a neighborhood vintage seller (Nanny‘s Anna Diop), home events, or a go to to an ailing neighbor, the movie turns into much less about horror and extra concerning the tragedy of his personal self-imposed loneliness. Latif’s ending matches with these sequences, however all of those disparate influences collectively do not make for a masterful quilt of horror and drama — it is extra like an intriguing however confounding collage ultimately. Nonetheless, I can see what Latif was aiming for.
A movie in two elements represents the 2 paths Charles might take. One is to comply with the darkish classes of the person within the basement, believing pursuit of wealth can justify any variety of sins, and wealth can be utilized to purchase absolution. The opposite is one the place riches will not be counted in gold however by sustaining robust roots in tradition and group. These messages exist in The Man in My Basement, however aren’t efficiently knitted collectively among the many clashing tones. So for all of the environment and the grounded but disturbing performances, the film fumbles its finale, delivering neither nerve-shredding scares nor a heart-filling nor -wrenching decision. Nonetheless, there’s richness within the try, and I can not wait to see what Latif does subsequent.
The Man in My Basement was reviewed out of the 2025 Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. It would open in choose theaters on Sept. 12. A launch on Hulu and Disney+ will comply with this fall.
