BEFORE: I almost forgot, we're not just coming up on Father's Day and the start of the Doc Block and July 4 and our country's 250'th birthday, but we're just two films away from the halfway point of the year - that's in just two sleeps! I didn't really plan anything special, that kind of just happens, I want to say last year that happened with "Daddy Day Care". There's only so much I can plan...
I worked at a screening of "Backrooms" last night, it looked very intriguing and it's the hot film right now, but I couldn't watch the whole thing, I just saw a minute or two of the movie and it got my attention, like with "Nope". But I'm thinking it's going to be very difficult to link to, and the odds of me dropping it in here, even if I did watch it, which I did NOT, would be next to impossible. C'est la vie, things I cannot control.
Tamara Lawrence carries over from "On Chesil Beach", and this film screened in the weekly Tuesday night film appreciation class at the theater, and I did work that screening. Again, I only saw a minute or two of this film, and it similarly seemed very intriguing, so therefore I put it on the list. But that screening couldn't have been more than a year or so ago, it's not like some films I knocked out this year that have been hanging around on the list for five years or more.
THE PLOT: Charles Blakey, a man living in Sag Harbor, is stuck in a rut, out of luck and about to lose his ancestral home when a peculiar businessman offers to rent his basement for the summer.
AFTER: I feel like this is one of those films that people talk about for a brief time because of the shocking plot twist, and then stop talking about it just as quickly. Does anybody remember "Nope" or "Us"? Somebody told me after watching "Backrooms" that it reminded them of "Us" - but why isn't anybody talking about "Us" any more? It was so shocking, and I don't want to give away anything about the ending, but just the fact that there were clones or something that were hyperactive and trying to replace everybody they looked like, that was significantly shocking, you'd think people would be buzzing about that one for a while. But the only film that was shocking and hit on a racial level that people are still talking about seems to be "Get Out", why is that the one that everybody remembers? What about "Sorry to Bother You", everybody was buzzing about it because of the jokes about black people having "white voices" so they could get ahead, and then there's a shocking twist in the film that nobody still talks about - was it so confusing that people didn't want to try and understand it, or did everybody just watch the first 30 minutes of that film and not stay tuned for the big shock twist?
The problem is, I can't really talk about this film without mentioning what the big shocking twist is, so if you don't want to know, like if you're planning on watching this film next week and you don't want it spoiled, then PLEASE STOP reading now, go away, come back tomorrow. I have to talk about what happened here and what it "means", if it means anything, or I just can't proceed. OK, are you gone or are you still with me? Don't answer that if you left...
OK, so Charles owns a house, it's in Sag Harbor, Long Island, and he inherited it from his late mother (there's a lot of that going around, I hear...) and lately he's been having trouble making ends meet. The whys and wherefores of that are to be discussed later in the film, but you know, it's not uncommon these days for someone to be falling short on their monthly payments. It's maybe a little stereotypical to focus on an African-American who's behind on his bills, but let's overlook that for the moment and think about inflation and the cost of living increases. We're all paying more for everything these days. Anyway, he gets contacted by a man (who happens to be Caucasian) who wants to rent his basement for two months, and Charles rejects him right away, because he doesn't want a roommate. Umm, why not? When I got divorced the first thing I did was get a roommate so I could keep making my mortgage payments and also put aside the money that I needed to pay my ex so I could keep the condo. We do what we must.
Charles takes a look in the basement, though, and finds a bunch of African-type artifacts, and a few other things like furniture, and his buddy puts him in touch with an antique dealer, who's willing to work on consignment, for a percentage, however this means it's going to be a while before he has cash in hand, so he calls back the rich white guy and accepts the offer. There are a few conditions, like he has to pick the guy up at the train station the first night he arrives, the payments will be made in cash, and some items will be delivered to the basement prior to his arrival. All of these things are acceptable to Charles, though if someone's paying that much in cash it sure suggests that something untoward might be going on. Let's put a pin in that one for the moment.
Charles gets the down payment on the rent and starts paying his mortgage and bills again, also treats himself to some groceries, fills up his gas tank and enjoys a night out on the town - there's a phrase for suddenly spending a lot when you strike it rich, but I'm not allowed to use it. The renter, Anniston, arrives, Charles picks him up at the train station, and as he settles in they share a couple glasses of vermouth, everything seems fine until Charles learns the next day that Anniston has constructed a jail cell in the basement and locked himself in it. Well, this wasn't part of the deal, Anniston claims that he is a criminal and belongs in jail, and now Charles will have to bring him meals and act as his jailer of sorts. Well, a number of explanations come to mind, but none of them make much sense, either this guy is insane or an actual criminal or is pulling some kind of a scam. But what's his end game here?
After further questioning, Anniston claimed to be in the business of "reclamations", some of which would be considered illegal, so my assumption was that this would lead, in some way, to him taking Charles' house away from him, due to some real or imagined value in or maybe under the house. Oil? Diamonds? Not sure, but just one phone call to the police or scream for help and it would appear that a black man had captured a white man and was holding him hostage. Surely that would lead to an arrest, and then Charles would be in jail and unable to pay his mortgage, and Anniston could buy it on the cheap after foreclosure. Well, that's not the way the story really pans out. Assuming that his intentions in self-imprisoning himself are what he says they are, he's not really after the house but some form of self-redemption for himself, and it's at least a bit racially motivated.
The more interesting part of the film, therefore, is the effect that knowing a man is locked up in his basement has on Charles - also Anniston keeps asking him personal questions about how he got "stuck" in Sag Harbor and what happened when he was the caregiver for his mother and uncle. Yeah, there's maybe something there because Charles has some guilt which manifests itself in various ways - there's often banging in the house that the guests don't seem able to hear, so either the place is haunted or Charles has some secrets that are giving him auditory hallucinations. (I had those for a while, but I think they were caused by high blood pressure, and I'm on medication for that now...). There are certainly ways in which this film feels like a horror movie, but at the end of the day, it just isn't - which is too bad, because if I treated it as one I could have used it in October to link films like "Vampires" and "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" - but now that ship has sailed.
I can't help but think this situation is also intended to be a metaphor for something, whether it's white guilt or black slavery, or possibly the reverse of that to prove a point. I'm back where I was at the start, wondering why more people haven't been talking about this movie if it's got such a shocking turn of events in it. But something remains elusive, either the metaphor isn't very clear-cut or we saw so many more shocking things in "Get Out" and "Us" that a guy renting a basement to put himself in prison doesn't even move the needle on the shock-o-meter these days. Or maybe the second half of the film just doesn't deliver the same one-two punch that the first half does, it's hard to see this story going anywhere significant in the last act, so when enough time has passed, there's a quick and convenient way to wrap up the story, and then it's kind of like nothing even happened, except maybe Charles isn't the same man any more.
It ends with Charles in the same basement, he's inside the cell that's still there, but the door is open and he's reading a book. Did he similarly put himself in jail to pay for his own misdeeds? I suppose that's one way to work things out, but if he really did something bad, it needs to be confessed to the authorities and real jail would need to be involved, you can't self-sentence yourself or be your own jailer. I think that Willem Dafoe was perfectly cast here, it's hard to imagine anyone else playing a character who needs to be friendly, potentially sinister and sympathetic at different times. I wish I understood more about the racial meaning of it all, as it stands I'm not sure if this should count as an appropriate film for Juneteenth or not. I'm going to give it a positive score just because it's unique, I've certainly never seen a film with this as a plot point before.
Directed by Nadia Latif
Also starring Corey Hawkins (last seen in "The Piano Lesson"), Willem Dafoe (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Anna Diop (last seen in "Us"), Jonathan Ajayi (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Gershwyn Eustace Jnr (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Pamela Nomvete, Brian Bovell (last seen in "Secrets & Lies"), Lizzie Lomas, Mark Arnold (last seen in "Wrath of Man"), Kayla Meikle (last seen in "Mickey 17"), Tim Dewberry, Bret Jones (last seen in "The Flash"), Josiah Leonardo Kabeya, Miah Hasselbaink (last seen in "Matilda: The Musical"), Dominique Tipper (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Olivia Michi Shrenzel, Shellia Kennedy, Brooke Walter.
RATING: 6 out of 10 gravestones in the backyard
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