The Man In My Basement

Being a owner of you house is a dream for many couples all over the world, or even if you are single at the moment but have a steady economy to get a bank loan for a house. Enjoying barbecues during summer with family members, playing sport activities outside with your children, celebrating Christmas weekend with a fire place and cooking in a quite a big kitchen. No matter what the reason is why you want to own a house it´s all good, everyone have different ideas of their perfect home. Me personally have never owned a house, i just lived in apartments so far and for a good reason. I don´t have to showel snow every winter, i don´t have to cut the grass every summer or trim bushes ( unless it´s a woman who needs service, i will happily help ). I can just chill on my balchony during summer having barbecues with a electric grill. In this neighborhood we have outside barbecue locations anyone living here can use, so if i want to have coal burned meat i have that option as well. Speaking of a house, what if you had a creepy man installing cameras in a vacation house, to be watching you for his own pleasure without you knowing this happened? That´s exactly what happens in the psychological thriller 14 Cameras from directors Seth Fuller and Scott Hussion. This is actually a sequel to the 2015 film 13 Cameras and i have never watched the first film. What makes 14 Cameras so good is the performance of actor Neville Archambault as the pervert Gerald, he is definetely very disturbing as a character and the film manage to portait the mentality of Gerald convincing. Worth a watch on streaming or VOD. Since last year i have been looking forward to see legendary actor Willem Dafoe ( who can forget his absolute brilliant performance in the 1986 war movie Platoon from director Oliver Stone ) in a thriller called The Man In My Basement from director Nadia Latif. Willem Dafoe have in the past made some really great thrillers such as the 2014 film A Most Wanted Man together with legendary actor Philip Seymor Hoffman. I sat down to watch The Man In My Basement on Disney + to find out, is this one of the better thrillers in recent years or is this unfortunately not that good at all?

Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins ) is in very deep trouble. He recently lost his mother, can´t find work and his debt is piling up. He have to find a solution to get money or he will lose his family home. Suddenly one day a man named Anniston Bennet ( Willem Dafoe ) knocks on his door. He would like to rent Charles basement to live there, and he is willing to pay a good amount of money if he accept his offer. Charles don´t have many options at this point and accept Anniston´s offer, not knowing what he is about to experience.

The Man In My Basement reminded me of thrillers of the 1970´s to be exact, where the main characters are more important than the plot itself. That´s something you don´t see very often these days and we usually see thrillers that are too polished on the surface. This film really try to deliver characters that we are meant to feel connected with, no matter how you feel about them in a positive or negative way. I feel this is a very important detail since this is a very character driven film, and that´s actually one strength of The Man In My Basement. Because there are plenty of thrillers that don´t use powerful dialogue that matches the characters, they just follow in the same pattern as many similar films. The acting from legendary actor Willam Dafoe as the mysterious character Anniston, is as always top class acting and he knows how to put on a show through his performance. Actor Corey Hawkins ( who you should see in the 2023 horror film Dracula - The Last Voyage Of The Demeter ) as house owner Charles also deliver a solid acting performance. Their scenes together is without a doubt the best dialogue scenes in the entire film. Actress Anna Diop as the character Narciss is definetely fascinating for her knowledge in black history, and i feel her acting performance feel natural and capturing as well. The bizarre plot of a man wanting to be locked up inside the basement actually works, thanks to the right kind of characters for a plot such as this. We get to find out the bakground for both of the main characters and there is a interesting twist that connects them both to this house. We also see that both of these individuals are struggling in different ways. As a psychological thriller i do feel The Man In My Basement does a good job telling a fascinating story thanks to the strong characters. Perhaps a little bit too long over 2 hours, but other than that i do feel that this is a film worth checking out. The Man In My Basement is refreshing to see trying to bring back thrillers of the 1970´s and i appreciate the dark vision of director Nadia Latif.  If you don´t know what to watch tonight i would suggest giving this film a chance.

Rating: DDD