TIFF Review: “The Man in My Basement”

The Man in My Basement (Nadia Latif, 2025) 2 out of 5 stars

As a fan of Walter Mosley’s writing, I had high hopes for director Nadia Latif’s feature debut, The Man in My Basement, based on his 2004 eponymous novel. Unfortunately, despite a promising first half and strong performances, the movie devolves into well-intentioned gibberish by the end. Wasted potential is hard to watch.

Corey Hawkins (The Color Purple) stars as Charles Blakey, a man living in Sag Harbor Hills, a historically Black community on Long Island, New York. The last representative of a family that has been in the area for eight generations, Charles is in poor shape, financially and emotionally. Out of work and out of money, he is about to lose the house in which he was born.

Until, that is, a mysterious stranger arrives. This would be Anniston Bennet (the prolific Willem Dafoe, Poor Things), who offers to pay Charles a substantial sum to occupy his basement. Why? Therein lies what at first appears a fascinating mystery but later becomes a mess of confused motives.

In the process of cleaning out said basement, Charles discovers a vast treasure trove of artifacts dating back at least a century or more, certain pieces no doubt brought from Africa by his enslaved ancestors. Following the advice of his friend, Ricky (Jonathan Ajayi, Chief of Station), Charles agrees to speak to an antiques dealer, Narciss (Anna Diop, Nanny). White people like old stuff like that, says Ricky, and there should be good dough in some of it.

Though Charles resists Anniston’s proposal, eventually he has no choice. There are reasons why he has so few options, all explored in Latif’s script. They prove at least initially compelling, even as the portrait that emerges of Charles is less than complimentary. Still, life is complicated and none of us are perfect.

Unfortunately, despite Hawkins’ natural charisma, it remains hard to understand why Charles has any remaining friends, given how poorly he treats them and how unpleasant he can be, in general. It also makes little sense why Narciss would find him at all romantically interesting. These are common issues in filmmaking, however; many movies make such mistakes.

But where The Man in My Basement goes uniquely wrong is in the utter chaos of its second half. After Anniston moves into the house, the screenplay soon reveals that he is far more of an ideological construct than convincing character. Plot devices come in all shapes and sizes, but he is a square peg who fails to fit into the vast hole at the center of the plot.

Latif is simply trying to do too much, taking on many issues of great import—the legacy of slavery, Black history, racial violence, and more—but doing none of them justice. Dafoe and Hawkins engage in spirited exchanges, but the dialogue never sounds anything but stilted. This basement needs a lot less clutter.