Overview

• The film adapts Walter Mosley’s novel with a screenplay co-written by first-time feature director Nadia Latif and Mosley.
• Willem Dafoe plays Anniston Bennet opposite Corey Hawkins as Charles Blakey, with Anna Diop, Tamara Lawrance and Jonathan Ajayi supporting.
• Latif describes the movie as part character study and part political polemic that threads thriller and horror tones across themes of race and trauma.
• Dafoe says he built a rare backstory for the character using materials Latif shared, citing influences like The Laughing Man, Enjoy Poverty and Onibaba.
• Latif had a completed script before production, and Dafoe and Hawkins shot the confined basement sequences in a dedicated, largely chronological block.