Emmy nominee Corey Hawkins and Academy Award nominee Willem Dafore face off in the tense trailer for “The Man in My Basement.” The psychological thriller from Andscape, the Black content studio of The Walt Disney Company, will make its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.
Adapted from Walter Mosley’s bestselling novel and directed by Nadia Latif in her feature debut, “The Man in My Basement” is set in the African American neighborhood of Sag Harbor, New York and centers on Charles Blakey (Hawkins), a man who is “out of work, out of luck and on the verge of foreclosure on his ancestral home” after his mother’s death. Then, a knock on the door from a mysterious businessman, Anniston Bennet (Dafoe), brings a bizarre and lucrative proposition.
“I have it in mind to rent your basement for a couple of months,” a smiling Bennet tells a bewildered Blakey, who rejects the offer at first, in the trailer.
But, the money the man is offering to rent out the dusty stand-up basement for the summer is enough to clear Blakey’s debts for good, so he reconsiders. It’s a fateful decision — one that ultimately forces Blakey to “confront his family’s ghosts and locks the men in a terrifying puzzle, at the heart of it, race, the source of their traumas and the root of all evil.”
“Why did you choose my house?” Blakey asks toward the end of the trailer. “There are some answers you don’t need to know,” Bennet replies eerily, then teases: “You seem tense Mr. Blakey…”
Things grow more unsettling as the clip continues and the two men get more and more entangled in their deadly and dangerous alliance. The footage culminates in a fiery finish as they ask one another an all-important question: “Why are you here?”
Anna Diop also stars in “The Man in My Basement,” which will be available in select theaters on Sept. 12 and on Hulu and Disney+ this fall.
Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe Star
The post “Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe Star” by Angelique Jackson was published on 08/14/2025 by variety.com