Aarcflick

Nadia Latif's feature debut, premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, is too constrained by the literal to access the symbolic power of its story. The psychological thriller "The Man in My Basement" adapts Walter Mosley's 2004 novel of the same name, but offers little in the way of intriguing psychology or suspense. Set in the quaint town of Sag Harbor, Long Island, a historically African-American community, the film follows a young Black slacker whose inherited house becomes the setting for a middle-aged white man's strange experiment, while also tackling themes of guilt, trauma, and racial animosity that quickly lead nowhere. Director: Nadia Latif Writers: Walter Mosley, Nadia Latif Stars: Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe, Anna Diop Mosley co-writes the script with first-time director Nadia Latif, who shows tremendous promise from the start, capturing the disoriented young Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) as he antagonizes one of his friends for no good r...