Willem Dafoe is one of cinema’s greatest living actors—and, also, one of its scariest, capable of sending a chill down the spine with a sly smile, sudden gesture, or sharp retort.
For more than 40 years, in projects as diverse as To Live and Die in L.A., Wild at Heart, Shadow of the Vampire, Antichrist, The Lighthouse, and Poor Things, the American-born artist has been a force of intense, unhinged, and often sorrowful menace.
His every action radiating volatile unpredictability, he’s a one-of-a-kind presence who never fails to surprise, and he reconfirms that reputation in The Man in My Basement, a beguiling psychological thriller in an Alfred Hitchcock Presents vein that premieres Sept. 5 at the Toronto International Film Festival.
In writer/director Nadia Latif’s feature debut, adapted from the 2004 novel by Walter Mosley, Dafoe is Anniston Bennet, a stranger who in the mid-’90s materializes on the doorstep of Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) asking to rent his basement for two months.
Hailing from Greenwich, Connecticut, which is not exactly next door to the New York African-American community of Sag Harbor that Charles calls home, Anniston is roundly rejected. Nonetheless, he leaves his business card (indicating that he’s in finance) in the hope that the owner might change his mind.
Theirs is a seemingly innocuous first encounter, and yet Dafoe’s cheeriness is laced with creepiness, as if his Anniston is hiding a secret that he’s enjoying keeping under wraps, and his appearance sets a malevolent tone that the proceedings never subsequently shake.
Charles is put off by Anniston’s proposition, but at that particular moment in time, he’s got bigger things to worry about than weird white men wanting to be his roomie. Over a boozy game of cards, Charles’ buddy Clarence (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr) gives him “tough love” by busting his chops for having no job and no money, and for being in jeopardy of losing his house.
While Charles knows that he’s “lazy” and “ungrateful,” he doesn’t want to hear it and instigates a fight that third friend Ricky (Jonathan Ajayi) is forced to break up. With few options, Charles takes Ricky’s advice and tries to get a construction job, only to be turned down. He’s similarly stonewalled by his aunt, who’s none too pleased to hear from her bum nephew. A loan officer is equally unsympathetic, not simply because Charles is months behind on his mortgage, but because he used to work at the bank until he was fired for stealing a few hundred dollars.
In dire straits, Charles reconsiders Anniston’s offer enough to venture into his basement, where he finds a variety of artifacts that were owned by his ancestors—eight generations of his family lived in this residence—and which Ricky surmises could be worth something.
To that end, he’s put in touch with Narciss Gully (Anna Diop), who runs a local quilt shop and apparently knows how to value such items. Of particular interest to Narciss are West African masks that she thinks indicate that African-Americans were in Sag Harbor earlier than anyone previously thought. Charles, however, only cares about cash, and when he hears that selling them won’t net an immediate profit, he gives Anniston a call.
Even though Dafoe has, to this point, merely been in one scene, Charles’ decision to reach out to Anniston is clearly the beginning of a Faustian bargain whose true nature he can’t begin to deduce. The Man in My Basement plays things close to the vest in order to generate suspense, even as its story unfolds and greater details come to light.
Anniston offers $65,000 for a two-month stay in Charles’ basement, and all he requires in return is the delivery of some boxes and a ride from the train station. This naturally strikes Charles as bizarre. Still, need trumps caution and he agrees to this arrangement, and on the night of Anniston’s arrival, he’s put at ease by the outsider’s conviviality. Over a glass of fine Japanese whiskey, they strike up an easygoing rapport.
(Warning: Some spoilers follow.)
Anniston, of course, is not who he seems to be—or, rather, he’s more alarming than he initially lets on—and The Man in My Basement starts divulging his intentions when, the day after his arrival, Charles goes downstairs and finds that his tenant has built an enormous cage and locked himself inside.
This is bonkers, and Anniston’s explanation (he craves a getaway from his life) unnerves Charles, albeit not enough to back out of their pact. Thus, Charles becomes the jailor of a willing prisoner, and the racial dynamics of their relationship is posited by Latif’s tale as part and parcel of larger issues at play in Charles’ life, be it his complicated feelings about his ancestral home (and the late relatives he alternately loved and loathed) or his desire, as Narciss’ remarks, to turn “his heritage into merchandise.”
Unfortunately, these undercurrents—furthered by Charles’ ambiguous visions of ghosts and a hungry dog, and TV news reports about the O.J. trial and the Rwandan genocide—never coalesce coherently in The Man in My Basement.
Rife with symbolic weight, the action is thematically jumbled, and worse, it takes so long establishing its scenario that it never develops a sense of urgency and madness. Latif’s direction is deft and sinister, energized by patient pans down hallways and around corners, and a pair of split diopter shots that italicize the tension between the protagonists.
Actual scares, however, are nonexistent, and that turns out to be a fatal flaw considering the story’s escalating messiness, which peaks when Narciss states, with all seriousness, that “all the evil in the world is white people”—a pronouncement the film never reckons with, much less justifies.
Despite much talk about torture, exploitation, murder, and redemption, The Man in My Basement ultimately says little about America’s complex past and present race relations. Even at its most frustratingly scattershot, though, Dafoe keeps the material from collapsing under the weight of its unrealized ambitions.
Revealing more of himself in increasingly heated confrontations with Charles, who forces him to answer questions in exchange for basic provisions, and who’s embodied by Hawkins with rattled, angry anxiousness (rooted in doubt and self-loathing), Anniston proves to be a unique sort of devil.
Dafoe can’t remedy this misshapen film’s shortcomings, but whether he’s cheerily chatting up his new landlord or wailing in the dark like a wounded animal, he’s so entrancingly enigmatic that you can’t take your eyes off him.
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