Willem Dafoe is back at the top of a streaming chart with his new movie The Man in My Basement. However, it seems that many people really wish he had stayed locked up in the lower levels of a studio vault and not been sent straight to the number one spot on Hulu.
The Man in My Basement comes with the following synopsis: “In the African-American neighborhood of Sag Harbor, New York, Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) is out of work, out of luck and on the verge of foreclosure on his ancestral home. A knock on the door from a mysterious businessman, Anniston Bennet (Willem Dafoe), brings a bizarre and lucrative proposition; rent his dusty stand-up basement out for the summer and receive enough money to clear his debts for good. Once Charles accepts, he finds himself led down a terrifying path that confronts 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.”
While the appearance of Dafoe in any movie is enough to drive viewers to watch, this one has not been pleasing in terms of its reviews from either critics or audiences. The Nadia Latif-directed film has landed a 43% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, and although it has not yet generated an audience score, with comments like “this movie is absolutely terrible. Would never have imagined Willem Dafoe would agree to be in such a poorly written movie,” it is likely that the resulting rating will be pretty much the same.
Is ‘The Man in My Basement’ Really a Movie That Doesn’t Deserve to Be #1?
While a 43% Rotten Tomatoes score is not the worst – and many blockbuster movies will attain to that – the views shared make it clear that the problem is not down to Dafoe, Corey Hawkins, Anna Diop, Mark Arnold or any of the other cast members. CBR’s Caralynn Matassa even says in her “rotten” review that it “is worth a watch for fans of Dafoe,” while Brooke Obie of Black Girl Watching calls both Hawkins and Dafoe “formidable.” So what is the issue with The Man in My Basement?
According to the Daily Mail’s Brian Viner, “the plot is convoluted and the dialogue overwritten,” and Jim Vorel of Paste Magazine calls its “bloated runtime” an “incomprehensible slideshow of trauma and weakly executed horror imagery.” This is then topped off by one audience review that notes, “It’s none of the things it tries to be while taking itself extremely serious. It tries to be deep but ends up a jumbled mess of too many poorly executed ideas.”
The package of Dafoe in a dark and creepy role, wrapped inside the promise of a racially-charged mystery thriller, has been enough to entice Hulu subscribers to click on the film as it trends on their new release banner. However, it seems that many of them are not finding exactly what they are looking for with this chart-topper.
- Release Date
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September 12, 2025
- Runtime
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115 Minutes
- Director
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Nadia Latif
- Writers
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Nadia Latif, Walter Mosley
- Producers
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Diane Houslin, John Giwa-Amu, Dave Bishop, Len Rowles
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Corey Hawkins
Charles Blakey
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Brian Bovell
Brent Blakey
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
