The Man in My Basement (2025)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins), an African American man living in Sag Harbor, is stuck in a rut, out of luck and about to lose his ancestral home when a peculiar white businessman with a European accent offers to rent his basement for the summer.
- Actors:
- Willem Dafoe, Jonathan Ajayi, Corey Hawkins, Mark Arnold, Anna Diop, Brian Bovell, Tamara Lawrance, Gershwyn Eustache Jnr, Brooke Walter, Pamela Nomvete, Shellia Kennedy, Kayla Meikle, Josiah Leonardo Kabeya, Miah Hasselbaink, Nahna James, Lizzie Lomas, Olivia Michi Shrenzel, Reed Stokes, Tim Dewberry, Michael Brennan
- Directors:
- Nadia Latif
- Producers:
- Dave Bishop, John Giwa-Amu, Diane Houslin, Len Rowles
- Writers:
- Nadia Latif, Walter Mosley
- Genres:
- Thrillers
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Reviews (1) of The Man in My Basement
Dafoe’s Basement Bargain: Evil, Cash, and Damp Walls - The Man in My Basement review by griggs
Basements are built for storage, not salvation. The Man in My Basement proves it—an eerie psychodrama where racism and capitalism seep through the walls like damp. Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) inherits not just an eight-generation Long Island house but its rot: debts, ghosts, and the weight of history. Nadia Latif’s debut traps him in the 1990s, as the TV mutters about the Rwandan genocide while he barters his late mother’s West African masks to keep the bank away.
Then comes Anniston Bennet: Willem Dafoe—because only he could turn a rented cellar into purgatory. He arrives with cash and strange luggage, grinning like the devil at a bargain. Supplicant on paper, tormentor in practice, he needles Charles with reminders that ownership itself is built on violence. Their roles flip and warp, yet never settle. The allegory tightens, the nightmare coils, and even waking feels like a bad dream.
Uneven, but its darkness lingers—less a story than a reminder of what’s buried beneath the floorboards.