Disney’s Andscape launches the first trailer and poster for The Man in My Basement, a psychological thriller that brings Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe, and Anna Diop together under director Nadia Latif. The film premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival, then opens in select cinemas on September 12, 2025, before arriving on Disney+ this autumn. Latif adapts Walter Mosley’s acclaimed novel with Mosley, shaping a tense chamber piece with sharp character work and a destabilizing moral game.
The story unfolds in Sag Harbor, New York, where Charles Blakey, played by Hawkins, faces job loss, heavy drinking, and the threat of foreclosure on his family home. A knock from Anniston Bennet, played by Dafoe, presents an offer that promises fast relief: rent the dusty stand-up basement for the summer in exchange for enough cash to clear every debt. Charles agrees, and the deal sets conditions that grow stranger by the day, with Bennet dictating unsettling terms and Charles struggling to understand the true cost.
While preparing the room, Charles discovers heirlooms that suggest links to African origins, including masks he never learned about. An antiques buyer, played by Anna Diop, steps in to assess these objects and help Charles read the clues they carry. She brings knowledge and care to a man who has numbed himself, and her presence widens the story’s lens, connecting present choices to buried histories.
Latif stages this tension as psychological study and genre engine. The film steers away from the tough Los Angeles terrain of Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress and moves toward a more uncanny register: closed doors, ritual-like requests, and a basement that turns into a pressure cooker. Charles and Bennet test each other through rules, confessions, and accusations. Childhood fears resurface. Long-suppressed truths push up through the floorboards. Hidden things return with force when money, power, and guilt meet in a confined space.
The Man in My Basement lands at a moment of sharp polarization. Latif focuses on two men whose deal opens a door to evil and to the histories that feed it. The film asks who pays, who profits, and who decides the rules when debt and power sit on the table. By the time the summer arrangement tightens, Charles sees that buried harm continues to act, and that forgetting does not erase consequence.
The film’s credits open with Nadia Latif as director and Walter Mosley alongside Latif as screenwriters. The ensemble features Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe, Anna Diop, Jonathan Ajayi, Gershwyn Eustache Jnr., Pamela Nomvete, and Tamara Lawrance. Producers include Diane Houslin p.g.a., John Giwa-Amu p.g.a., Len Rowlands p.g.a., and Dave Bishop.
