Film Review

The Man in My Basement (2025) — promising premise lost in protracted pondering

An African American man is stuck in a rut, out of luck, and about to lose his ancestral home when a peculiar white businessman offers to rent his basement for the summer.

The Man in My Basement is one of those ambitious films that tackles big issues by boiling them down into a small, intimate situation. It’s about complicity. An individual’s action or inaction cannot side-step culpability because our modern, ‘developed’ world has been built upon exploitation, which we are the beneficiaries of, simply by living in it. Remembrance of the past and what our forebears may or may not have done is a double-edged sword.

For one thing, strength can be found in the sense of identity that comes with knowledge and acceptance of one’s heritage. Conversely, we may unwittingly, or completely wittingly, be fuelled to continue a cycle of injustice instigated by our ancestors; we may perpetuate their prejudices. Maybe we can only atone for the evils of the past by attending to our…