The Man in My Basement Offers a Creepy, Thought-Provoking Adaptation of Walter Mosley’s Novel
It’s immediately obvious that nothing good can come from the mysterious offer that wealthy stranger Anniston Bennet (Willem Dafoe) makes to desperate homeowner Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) to rent out Charles’ basement for an exorbitant amount of money.
Even though he can’t hear the ominous music on the soundtrack or see the way the camera swoops perilously around his creepy old house, Charles understands that something about Anniston’s offer isn’t quite right. But without the money that Anniston is offering, he won’t be able to keep the house that’s been in his family for eight generations, so he agrees.
The Man in My Basement explores the consequences of that agreement, in a story that is part mystery, part horror, part social commentary, and part existential crisis. Based on the novel by Walter Mosley, the movie amplifies its haunted-house atmosphere while engaging with the complex issues that Mosley raises.
Mosley co-wrote the screenplay with director Nadia Latif, and some of the richest material involves the tense dialogue exchanges between Charles and Anniston. It’s sharply written, and evocatively performed by the two stars. The horror-movie vibe sometimes falters, but the rapport between the main characters remains gripping.
Anniston isn’t just a rich guy offering a tantalizing amount of money to someone in financial distress. He’s also a privileged white man setting up residence in the historically Black neighborhood of Sag Harbor Hills, on New York’s Long Island. Charles and his neighbors are part of a long history of African-American settlements in Sag Harbor, and Charles points out that his family members are all buried in the graveyard behind his house. Even before Anniston reveals the details of his plan for Charles’ basement, there’s a racially charged undercurrent to his pitch.
The Man in My Basement is set sometime in the 1990s, and Sag Harbor Hills is already changing, with new construction projects bringing gentrification. Anniston’s offer to rent part of Charles’ home could be a reflection of that gentrification, although Mosley and Latif add a number of other thematic elements to his unfolding proposition.
Anniston requires Charles to tell no one of their arrangement, and Charles is shocked to discover that the crates Anniston has delivered to the house contain materials to build a secure holding cell. Anniston places himself inside this cell and gives Charles the key, for reasons that seem to be ever-changing, with no way to trust that anything he says is the truth.
Charles continues to go about his daily business, hanging out with his friend Ricky (Jonathan Ajayi) and flirting with antiques dealer Narciss (Anna Diop), who’s helping him assess the value of his family heirlooms, but Anniston is always on his mind, lurking in the basement and posing an unknowable danger. The dynamic between the two characters constantly shifts, with Anniston sometimes threatening Charles and sometimes begging him for mercy.
At times it resembles the misanthropic abstractions of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, which embodies ideas about oppression and exploitation in a crude, cruel allegory. At other times, it’s more of a traditional thriller, as Anniston and Charles trade dark revelations about their pasts like Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs.
The biggest problem with The Man in My Basement is that it tries to be too many things at once, and the horror touches that Latif adds to the story amount to little more than empty teases. But the movie is also impressively ambitious for a feature debut, and Latif rises to the challenge of adapting Mosley’s multilayered novel. As smart as it would have been for Charles to turn Anniston away the moment he knocks on the door, it’s more rewarding for the audience to witness the difficult, unsettling confrontation that follows when Charles lets the stranger in.
The Man in My Basement opens September 12 in select theaters and streams September 26 on Hulu.
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Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He has written about movies, TV, and pop culture for the Boston Globe, Vulture, Tom’s Guide, Inverse, Crooked Marquee, and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.