Movie Review: THE MAN IN MY BASEMENT

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: September 12th, 2025 / 01:25 AM

THE MAIN IN MY BASEMENT movie poster | ©2025 Andscape/Hulu

Rating: R
Stars: Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe, Anna Diop, Jonathan Ajayi, Brian Bovell, Mark Arnold, Tamara Lawrance, Gershwyn Eustache Jr., Pamela Nomvete, Shellia Kennedy
Writers: Walter Mosley and Nadia Latif, based on the novel by Walter Mosley
Director: Nadia Latif
Distributor: Andscape/Hulu
Release Date: September 12, 2025 (theatrical), Hulu/Disney+ (later in fall 2025)

Having the real actor Willem Dafoe in your basement would arguably be a little odd but, so long as he wasn’t there against his will, probably agreeable. Having a character of the type frequently played by Dafoe in your basement would be something else altogether.

This is what befalls Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins), a thirtysomething Black homeowner in Sag Harbor, New York. Charles has a beautiful house that has been in his family for generations. However, he is behind on the mortgage and currently unemployed, having been fired from his last job.

Even money woes can’t induce Charles to be enthusiastic about finding new employment. His friends and family worry about him drifting through life (and are getting irate about him asking for loans).

Then Dafoe’s Anniston Bennet shows up at Charles’s doorstep, offering $65,000 to live in Charles’s basement for two months. Why does Anniston feel the need to do this?

The answers to that question, as well as what it may take to get Charles to focus, propel the rest of THE MAN IN MY BASEMENT. Based on the 2004 novel of the same name by Walter Mosley, with a screenplay by Mosley and director Nadia Latif, the film contemplates race, power, ancestry, privilege, guilt, responsibility, and a whole lot of other weighty topics.

Without having read Mosley’s novel, this reviewer cannot say how well these themes were dealt with in the source material. Here, despite bone-sincere performances by Hawkins and Dafoe, the discussions, arguments and revelations come off as didactic and heavy-handed.

At least in the film, Anniston’s motives don’t feel viscerally plausible. We come to understand what he’s trying to do, but the case made for why he’s chosen to do it in this manner is hard to buy, even if we take it as metaphor. It might come off better in prose, where we can more easily get into his head. Here, we must rely on what Anniston says, and he often speaks for effect rather than truth.

Additionally, we don’t hear or see the run-up to Anniston deciding to show up at Charles’s home. The filmmakers seem to feel the eventual disclosure of his purpose fills this gap, but it doesn’t.

As for Charles, many people will easily relate to renting part of one’s home for two months for a relatively huge sum, even under circumstances designed to raise suspicions.

Since he’s got his own secrets, and he has to be nudged out of his passivity in stages, while Hawkins is convincing in everything he does, Charles as a character simply isn’t especially engaging to watch.

The pacing is languid. We’re almost half an hour in before Anniston arrives, and it’s another half-hour before he and Charles start to have serious conversations.

There is plenty of symbolism in THE MAN IN MY BASEMENT, and Latif selects her visuals well.

Everything brought up in THE MAN IN MY BASEMENT is worth contemplation, discussion and debate. It’s just that, in this presentation, its elements don’t hold up as drama.

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