Corey Hawkins steps into an unsettling psychological storm in the upcoming thriller The Man in My Basement, where a strange knock on the door from Willem Dafoe changes everything.
Get this, the teaser trailer for the Andscape-produced film, set to hit Hulu and theaters this fall, teases a moody, mind-bending drama adapted from Walter Mosley’s acclaimed 2004 novel.
While marking her directorial debut, Nadia Latif directs the film while also co-writing the screenplay alongside Mosley himself. The story revolves around Hawkins’ character, Charles Blakey, a man clinging to the last threads of his family legacy as he fights to save his home. What begins as a desperate situation takes a bizarre turn when a visitor offers a disturbing deal.
As reported, Hawkins stars “as a man who is trying to save his family home. Things get weird when a man offers him a proposition that could save his home, but open him up to other terrifying consequences.”
According to the official synopsis:
“In the African American neighborhood of Sag Harbor, New York, Charles Blakey (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 (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.”
As Blakey agrees to the offer, the trailer hints at a spiraling descent into psychological warfare, moral reckoning, and secrets buried deep within the walls of his own home. The eerie presence of Dafoe as the enigmatic tenant turns this into more than just a tense drama, injecting elements of horror and existential dread.
The cast is stacked with talent, including Anna Diop, Jonathan Ajayi, Gershwyn Eustache Jnr, Pamela Nomvete, and Tamara Lawrance. Diane Houslin, John Giwa Amu, Dave Bishop, and Len Rowlands round out the producing team behind the scenes.
Interestingly, the path to production took an unexpected turn. The project was originally set to star Jonathan Majors, who had signed on to lead and executive produce through his Tall Street Productions banner. However, following legal troubles in 2023 stemming from accusations made by his former partner, Majors was dropped from the film. After being found guilty on two counts of assault and battery in 2024, he avoided jail time and was ordered to complete a year of domestic violence counseling. Hawkins eventually stepped in to replace him both in front of and behind the camera.
Disney and ESPN’s Andscape joined the project during this transition, further backing the film and its vision.