The Man In My Basement

There’s a tried-and-true saying: if an offer seems too good to be true, that’s because it is. When Charles (Straight Outta Compton's Corey Hawkins), facing the loss of his home and grieving his late mother, is offered $1,000 a day by a stranger named Anniston (Willem Dafoe) to live in his basement, Charles simply can’t refuse. Thrillers often hinge on bad decision-making, but The Man In My Basement does well to establish Charles’ dire circumstances. Were you in his position, you’d welcome Anniston into your basement in a heartbeat.

Excitingly, the film never unfolds like you’d anticipate. In her directorial debut, Nadia Latif boldly eschews the expected, opting out of easy jump-scares and implementing a minimalistic score instead of the pulse-pounding, bombastic music that’s often associated with the genre. Instead, diegetic sounds from everyday objects — kettles, phones, open windows — keep tensions high.

While the film has a lot of promise, it struggles under the weight of its ambitions.

Latif proves herself to be an actor’s director, drawing terrific performances from her two leads. Hawkins beautifully channels Charles’ sadness and desperation, while Dafoe delivers a performance full of quiet, understated menace. It’s the kind of work that burrows itself under your skin and permits your imagination to run amok. Anna Diop (The Book Of Clarence), in a supporting role, is also great. Latif’s shot compositions are clean and concise, and a haunting use of shadow by cinematographer Ula Pontikos (Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool) turns the basement into a devilishly intriguing hellscape.

While the film has a lot of promise, it struggles under the weight of its ambitions. The script, co-written by Latif and Walter Mosley (who wrote the book the film is based on), tackles themes including grief, intergenerational trauma, race, ancestry, colonial history, legacy, and more. In trying to accomplish so much in one film, many of these threads are dealt with in a somewhat underwhelming fashion, turning what could have been a lean, mean 90-minute thriller into a baggier film that encroaches on two hours.

Thankfully, Hawkins and Dafoe are electric together, and the scenes that unfold in the basement are excellent. Despite some issues with script and pacing, there’s more than enough here to be excited for what Latif will do in her (hopefully inevitable) sophomore feature.