One of the takeaways from The Man in My Basement (now streaming on Hulu) seems self-evident: If Willem Dafoe knocks on your door with a too-good-to-be-true proposition, be skeptical. Perhaps we knew that before we watched the movie, considering Dafoe’s reputation for playing unsettling movie characters, but a reminder never hurts. First-time feature director Nadia Latif adapts Walter Mosley’s 2004 novel – they co-wrote the script together – about a struggling Black man who rents out his basement to a mysterious White man, and the results are curious, a boiling stew of provocative ideas that don’t quite come together as a cohesive dish. But it may be fascinating enough to warrant a watch anyway.
The Gist: Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) is getting close to rock-bottom. He’s alone. He’s on the brink of losing the house that’s been in his family for eight generations. He tends to drink a lot. He’s hustling for loans from exasperated relatives. In the basement, there’s a treasure trove of heirlooms and historical artifacts that he calls “junk.” It’s valuable and he wants to sell it to stop the bank from foreclosing. That “junk” is also deeply connected to his culture and family heritage. The paintings, ancient African masks, 150-year-old quilts and the like are as much a part of the house as the walls and windows. Get rid of it, and you might as well sell the house and move away and try to never think about it again.
But. Does Charles actually care about all of this? Does he want to keep the house, or does he just feel obligated to hold onto it? It’s hard to tell. He’s in a tough place personally. Indecisive. Unsettled. Troubled by the chain of events that got him here: The death of his mother, caring for the dying uncle who abused him, losing his job after committing an ill-advised indiscretion. In one montage, we see that he has no food in the house, no gas in his car and no money to do anything about it. He watches as his friends do something with their lives – work jobs, meet people, start families. His needs are immediate, but ghosts of the past and worry for the future creep into the picture. The house sits in a cozy wooded area; alongside it are the graves of Charles’ relatives. He goes into the basement to assess its prized contents, and finds a dead raccoon. Maggots writhe in its decaying flesh.
“I just got stuck,” Charles says. He contacts an antiques dealer, Narciss (Anna Diop), who looks at the artifacts with great interest. “It’s almost like they’re trying to tell me something I know, but I forgot,” he explains. Narciss could just broker the deal and take the money, but she pushes back – she warns him about “turning your heritage into merchandise.” Just when it seems like Charles has no other options, a man knocks on his door. Anniston Bennet (Dafoe) wants to rent out his basement. Charles is rightly skeptical. He says no thank you and sends him off but Anniston calls back. He’d rent the basement for $1,000 a day for 65 days. Cash. Charles agrees and doesn’t ask any questions, even though most of us would do the latter thing before doing the former thing; it’s only logical. Charles clears out the basement and Anniston arrives with several wooden crates. Charles leaves Anniston down there and comes back the next morning to find Anniston has assembled a prison cell and locked himself in it. Charles will have to bring him meals and books to read, and the movie glosses over the toilet situation. Anniston calls it his “spiritual journey.” But is it? Really? A spiritual journey?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Man in My Basement plays out like a mostly humorless Jordan Peele lite – think Get Out or Us if they never quite got to the point.
Performance Worth Watching: The subtle push-and-pull between Dafoe and Hawkins is effective and memorable, as their power struggle plays out as a sort of psychological game.
Memorable Dialogue: Charles: “…and I waited until those screams ran out.”
Sex and Skin: No sex; full frontal male.
Our Take: The Man in My Basement is rich with visceral and intellectual provocation, but it’s like a meticulous painting with incredible detail and no focal point. The performances are authentic and feel lived-in – Hawkins is convincing as a deeply troubled soul, Dafoe is typically strong as a man with a sinister aura but an open and honest expression, Diop is a grounding force in the crucial supporting role of an objective outsider. The production design is richly atmospheric, and much effort was put into making Charles’ beautiful but neglected house feel as homey as it is haunted. Latif nourishes a ghostly-chilling tone that’s routinely effective. It’s a thoroughly well-considered film outside its screenplay, which seems to lack a core thematic strategy, touching on the stuff of a psychological thriller crossed with horror and underscored with the politics of American history and culture.
No doubt, the implication of centuries of conflict are at play in the subtext as a Black man keeps a White man in a cage – the optics are eyebrow-raising – although it’s complicated by how the Black man must function in some capacity as the White man’s servant. Charles wrestles with the trauma of his abuse. Charles wrestles with where he fits into his family history. Charles wrestles with his inability to relate to others, be they his longtime poker buddies or a romantic interest in Narciss. Charles wrestles with what he should do with the gorgeous artifacts he’s inherited – there’s even a moment when Anniston asks to see one of the African masks, and shows Charles that, beneath the paint, they’re made of gold.
He wrestles, but the movie never pins any of these ideas to the mat. It keeps casting out lines without pulling any in, at the expense of any sustained dramatic tension. It’s just fishing, fishing, fishing, for two hours, as Charles suffers bizarre hallucinations, of a Black man’s bloodied hands, of being stalked by a stray dog, of strange bumps and thumps in his house, until reality and dreams blur together. We are as uncertain as he is as to where this is all going. Unfortunately, it seems as if the filmmakers are uncertain about it, too.
Our Call: Fascinating, yes. But fulfilling? Not quite. There’s much to appreciate in The Man in My Basement, but it just doesn’t pay on its promise. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.