by Charles Kirkland, Jr.
With his back against a wall, financially, a man is forced to rent out his basement to a strange man in The Man In My Basement.
Charles Blakey is strapped for cash. Ostracized by his Sag Harbor community and drowning in mortgage debt on his inherited family home, he’s desperate for a way out. Contemplating the sale of family heirlooms, his luck seemingly changes when a mysterious man named Anniston Bennet appears with an unusual proposition: he’ll pay one thousand dollars a day for sixty-five days to rent Charles’s basement. Despite his instincts screaming otherwise, Charles agrees.
The Man in My Basement is a 2025 psychological thriller directed and co-written by Nadia Latif (in her feature directorial debut) and adapted from Walter Mosley’s 2004 novel of the same name. Mosley, known for his layered explorations of race, identity, and morality, co-wrote the screenplay. The film stars Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe, Anna Diop, and Tamara Lawrance.
As with much of Mosley’s work, The Man in My Basement is rich in thematic ambition. The novel delves deeply into issues of race and racism, generational trauma, morality, punishment, freedom, and complicity. Attempting to distill such weighty themes into a two-hour film is an ambitious, perhaps overly so, undertaking. Having Mosley on board as a co-writer lends credibility and insight to the adaptation, but even his involvement cannot entirely overcome the limitations of the format.
The film ultimately feels like a conceptual sketch of the novel, a superficial treatment of its source material. While the screenplay introduces many of the same questions posed by the book, it rarely follows them through with the same rigor. Themes are raised, then left hanging; critical tensions are underdeveloped. As a result, the film lacks the narrative and emotional payoff that made the novel so compelling.
There are also notable plot inconsistencies that undercut the film’s internal logic. For instance, if Charles’s home has been passed down through eight generations, how can there be an active mortgage on it? Such oversights weaken the credibility of the story’s stakes.
Corey Hawkins and Willem Dafoe, both formidable talents, are given fascinating roles to inhabit. Hawkins brings a quiet intensity to Charles, while Dafoe is characteristically unsettling as Bennet. However, the script doesn’t provide enough depth or backstory to fully flesh out their characters. The film seems to want audiences to feel both contempt and sympathy for each man, but instead leaves us adrift, unable to fully connect or care. The result is a vague emotional detachment that undermines the film’s dramatic tension.
Rated R for language, sexual content, graphic nudity, and some violent content, The Man in My Basement aims high, but it doesn’t quite land. It’s a visually engaging, well-acted piece with moments of intrigue, but one that ultimately fails to do justice to the depth and complexity of Mosley’s original work.
The Man In My Basement can be seen on Hulu starting September 26, 2025.
Grade: C-