Dafoe and Hawkins Scorch The Man In The Basement

How much money would it take for you to let a complete stranger live in the basement of your home?  I don’t know about you, but after having some not so stellar experiences with former roommates that I didn’t know prior to them coming into my home, there is not enough money printed that would allow me to go down that rabbit hole.  Yet, that is exactly what goes down in Nadia Latif’s adaptation of Walter Mosley’s The Man in the Basement.

Charles Blakey’s (Corey Hawkins) life is falling apart. He’s lonely, can’t find work and is drinking way too much over the prospect of losing his family’s Sag Harbor home. When a mysterious white man, Anniston Bennet (Willem Dafoe), offers to rent his basement for a ridiculous amount of cash, a hesitant and desperate Blakey agrees, especially about the decidedly odd accommodations Bennet requests.

While prepping the room for his tenant, Blakey discovers some mysterious heirlooms, possibly African tribal masks, which hint at a history he knows absolutely nothing about. An antiques buyer (Anna Diop) is able to fill in the gaps while embodying a compassionate counterpoint to his apathetic views.

The mask discovery is not the last disturbing revelation,  As Charles is drawn into his tenant’s bizarre world, reality and childhood terrors converge and he discovers that just because something is hidden or buried doesn’t mean it’s gone or even truly forgotten.

The Man in My Basement’s uncanny elements make it closer to the world of genre fiction than the hard-boiled Los Angeles of Devil in a Blue Dress, the big-screen adaptation Mosley is best known for and Latif ‘s bold and unnerving film debut couldn’t be more timely.  In an increasingly polarized world, it’s incredibly powerful to see these two very different men confront evil in its purest form is a sight to behold. Although, The Man in the Basement suffers at times as a muddled psychological thriller whose subtext, in many instances takes over, it’s the beautifully anchored performances by the  Dafoe and Hawkins, that make this adaptation worth the watch.