The Man in My Basement review – Willem Dafoe is an unsettling guest in eerie psychodrama

Adapted for the screen from his own novel Walter Mosley examines power dynamics and racial tension with a deftly disquieting hand in this deeply strange parable

Feature first-timer Nadia Latif here directs a deeply strange parable, almost unlocatable in meaning and tone, adapted for the screen by Walter Mosley from his own 2004 novel. It appears to be a metaphor for racism and capitalism, for exploitation and for the historically hidden violence built into the foundations of ownership. Yet how exactly the metaphor works is unclear; it is like a labyrinth in which characters and audience can get disoriented. The final shot shows someone reading Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. I found myself thinking of Zadie Smith’s essay on Jordan Peele’s Get Out in which she references Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks.

The setting is the 90s, in which half-heard stories on the TV news about Rwanda and OJ have an unstressed racial dimension. We are in Sag Harbor in New York state, a neighbourhood with strong African American community: Corey Hawkins plays a troubled black man called Charles Blakey who lives alone in a handsome but neglected house which has been in his family for eight generations. Charles nursed his late mother and uncle there, but rashly took out a loan against the property; and now, unable to get a job due to a question mark over his honesty and unable to make the mortgage repayments, he may lose this roof over his head. A local antiques expert Narciss Gully (Anna Diop) tells him his late mother’s possessions might be worth a good deal, especially her collection of west African masks, but the cash could take some time. Charles needs money now.