The Man in My Basement
It’s the 1990s – Clinton in the White House, massacres in Rwanda, OJ on trial – but in Sag Harbor, a ‘historically African-American community’, Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) is too caught up in his own worries to notice much about the wider world … he lives in the (terrific) house his family has owned for eight generations, but is in danger of losing it to the bank from which he was recently fired for alleged embezzlement and can’t get paid work to settle his many debts because the manager has spread the word that he can’t be trusted. He’s also one of those people it’s impossible to help – in an introductory poker game scene, he goes out of his way to insult and alienate his oldest friends. Even the fact that his house is full of ‘junk’ from his ancestors which might be valuable – including three African masks which he becomes obsessed with – isn’t a route to raising easy cash, since his contact Narciss (Anna Diop) guilts him about throwing away his heritage.
Then a white guy, Anniston Bennet (Willem Dafoe), shows up with a miracle offer – a thousand dollars a day to rent his ‘stand-up’ basement. Even Charles doesn’t bite at first, knowing there must be something hinky about any deal made with someone who looks like the Green Goblin, but in the end he bows to the inevitable and Bennet moves in. The tenant works overnight to set up his living space, which is also a cage to which he gives Charles the key … and a psycho-drama plays out between them, raising all manner of social and racial issues while delving into the semi-gothic past. Being Sag Harbor, Moby-Dick is a big thing in the community and a key scene has Charles recall the passage about a feeding frenzy and the notion that if not for their appetites sharks (and people) would be angels. The balance of power shifts around the key and the light-switch and Bennet submits to a Lecter-like quid pro quo interrogation – asking one question of Charles for every three asked him.
Scripted by director Nadia Latif and Walter Mosley, from Mosley’s novel, The Man in My Basement looks and sounds like a Jordan Peele horror movie – even before Bennet moves in, this house is haunted by creaks and bad memories and possible African spirits – with a sense of simmering menace in many small incidents – Charles has comprehensively screwed himself over so badly on top of all the injustices heaped on a black man in America that even stopping at a gas station late at night prompts a panic attack … and if left in the dark too long, Bennet goes on dirty protest (he has a chemical toilet in his cell) and starts howling like the Wolf Man. The film has that depth and texture which generally comes from having a situation (and characters and setting) being well thought-through by a novelist beforehand – Hawkins is compelling as a guy it’s really hard to like, which is exactly the point, but the film has a sense of the other people he only vaguely interracts with (a concerned neighbour who is looking after a mysterious invalid, a girl who was plainly interested in him but has happily settled for his less complicated friend) and of the weathered, historic town (it’s a surprise to find out that much of the film was shot in Wales).
However, a drawback is that it was set in stone as a novel – so it doesn’t answer questions a development exec might raise about some of the plot points, like why Bennet has specifically chosen Charles rather than any other potential basement owner. A few sequences – Charles masturbating while half-watching Rwanda massacre footage on TV news – send really mixed messages, and when the suspense aspect takes a back seat to long talks about the nature of human evil it sometimes seems the film is losing its grip as its characters grapple with darkness. Nevertheless, it’s got a brace of awards-quality lead performances and dares to get into big editorial issues at a time that’s arguably more dangerous for creatives than it was in the 1990s.
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