Directed By Nadia Latif

Starring – Willem Dafoe, Corey Hawkins, Jonathan Ajayi

The Plot – Charles Blakey (Hawkins), an African American man living in Sag Harbor, is stuck in a rut, out of luck and about to lose his ancestral home when a peculiar white businessman (Dafoe), sporting a European accent, offers to rent his basement for the summer.

Rated R for adult language, sexual content, graphic nudity and some violent content.

The Man in My Basement | Official Trailer | Hulu

POSITIVES

Following in the vein of recent horror and psychological thrillers of the contemporary age, “The Man in My Basement” features a variety of thought-provoking and complex introspective talking points to enhance its already original concept, in turn engaging the audience with a series of intriguing interactions between Hawkins and Dafoe that revel in the ambiguity of such a strange situation between them. While grief is easily the most thoroughly fleshed out aspect of the entire script, enacting a psychological delve into the sleeplessly unrelenting mind that haunts Charles like a ghost that continuously hangs overhead in the imagery, the script also stitches in aspects pertaining to the thin line between freedom versus captivity, ancestral history, race relations, and even fundamental questions centering human nature and morality, that challenge the audience to think outside of the conventionalized box of societal commentary, even in emitting uncomfortable observations that continuously shakes up the power struggle of a depraved dynamic between its dual protagonist. Because of such, the interactions between Charles and Anniston are easily the most fascinating component of the entire film, and particularly the moments where my investment felt most faithful towards what transpires on-screen between them, and with Latif’s fearless feature length directorial debut taking no shortage of credibly creative chances in everything from the lucidly sleek presentation to her manipulative tactics with the intricacies of the sound design, she’s able to maintain an atmospheric uncertainty that challenges everything that we’re experiencing with reality in real time, with race already playing such a tender role in how we open our doors to the strangers that lurk outside of them. On the subject of that aforementioned visual flare, Latif and cinematographer Ula Pontikos constantly work overtime not only in captivating the imagery with the cultural representation of the elaborate means of the dominant setting’s set designs, but also in the immersive appeal of continuously pitting its audience in the shoes of these characters and their overwhelming predicaments, with tightly constructed POV angles and patiently surveilling framing choices during one on one interactions, between Charles and Anniston, that sizzle with the kind of immersive artistry that pits the audience in the shoes of those being hypothetically challenged. This job is made all the easier when the performances from Corey Hawkins and especially Willem Dafoe bring no shortage of commanding gravitas and provocative duality in their respective impulses, leveraging a lot of urgency and vulnerability to dialogue-heavy scenes between them that always feels like a battle for leverage in a few confrontational inches. Hawkins fills in for Jonathan Majors, who was forced to step down after his recent off-screen controversies, and in his turn there’s still a lot of Majors that still persists in this memorable turn full of impulsive desperation and erratic outbursts, conveying Hawkins in ways that simultaneously merge the immaturity and isolation factors of his intended character direction, all with a clouded demeanor that speaks volumes about the internalized combustion persisting from within him. As for Dafoe, he gives what I can only describe as the Hannibal Lechter performance of his already prestigious career, not only in the fact that he’s in confinement for a majority of the picture, but also in that he makes passionate love to the camera during long-winded diatribes, in which he stares a hole through the hearts of the audience with unmitigated confidence and persistence that constantly make him a wild card of options to accurately interpret, and while it’s still far from his best performance, it is a reminder of the level of influence and elevation that he has to a film that struggles insurmountably around him.

NEGATIVES

That last statement might come as a surprise alongside so many initial praises for the passion constantly exuded on-screen by Latif, but it’s clear that her inexperience as a storyteller eventually comes to overwhelm her in the tumultuously jaded execution of her affair, particularly in adapting the story from a novel of the same name, which took more time fleshing out the pivotal details of its characterization. Here, because the film’s pacing feels inconsistent between the story of its two halves, with the opening act of the movie vitally rushing through motivations and meanings to Charles’ value as a protagonist, we’re never given a chance to properly invest and empathize within him and the magnitude and urgency of his especially dire situation, in turn undercutting his humanity with some eventual ethical decisions paid to the character during the second half, which practically leaves him and our optimism for the engagement feeling tragically unsalvageable. Where Latif’s hand in the uncontrollable chaos sets in is in attempting to not only continuously juggle too many plates of aforementioned thematic intrigue, but also her absurdity and surrealism during the second half, which has the direction feeling spawned from two different visionaries, each seeking crucially confrontational outlooks towards what the film should be. On the former, these many compelling talking points shape an expansive societal outlook on a film that at least conceptually is framed claustrophobically between captor and captive, but are never given further dissection to flesh anything out that surmises anything originally enticing or resolving about the individualized conflicts from within them, and the latter, while opting for more of the visual flare during the film’s second half, with lucidly surreal sequences that breed something seemingly supernatural to what’s transpiring in the household, feels like a complete manipulation on every rule and logic that was initially articulated, leading to a disappointingly rushed resolution that didn’t shock or awe me in ways that Latif was clearly expecting to conjure. Finally, the film ambitiously clocks in at 110 minutes of screentime, and while that irony should produce more than enough opportunity to further flesh out every problematic instance mentioned in this section, it all feels unnecessary by this film’s finished product, leading to periodic bouts of boredom to the scenes outside of Hawkins and Dafoe interacting that had me yearning for this movie to slice off twenty minutes of its duration, which wouldn’t cost its themes or messaging a think in the surface level exploits. Where the film feels the brunt of this burden is at the beginning of the second act, where narrative progression slugs to a standstill during a area of storytelling that opts for more questions instead of answers, and while I can understand that the movie’s intention is to build speculation to an inevitable confrontation, the two men spend far too much time apart during this trivial section, without anything in the way of compelling thrills or even insightful information to tie us over for the long haul.

OVERALL
“The Man in My Basement” is both an ambitious and audacious feature length directorial debut for Nadia Latif, who explores racial power dynamics by utilizing horror consistencies, but is ultimately overwhelmed by attempting too much at once, and in turn leaving the film feeling captive by its own imagination. While both Corey Hawkins and Willem Dafoe hand in structurally sound work that constantly captures the attention of the audience with speculation of their respective ambiguities, it’s merely just a fascinating concept that doesn’t translate especially well from page to screen, leaving this basement without a stable foundation to withstand all of the pressure that has it crumbling during such an unmemorable climax.

My Grade: 5.6 or D+