The Man in the BasementMovies like The Man in the Basement
- Key Features:
- Psychological thriller, Home invasion, Manipulation, Family drama, Gaslighting, Perversion, Southern Gothic, Mind games, Threat, Paranoia
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Fans of psychological thrillers, Viewers interested in suspenseful narratives, Those who enjoy character-driven stories, Audiences seeking unsettling films
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Dread
The Man in the Basement

A Parisian couple decides to sell an unsanitary basement in their building. A very ordinary, nondescript man, Mr. Fonzic, shows up to buy it. Nothing unusual there, until the man moves into the cellar and makes it his permanent residence. The couple tries desperately to cancel the sale but to no avail. Worse, Mr. Fonzic becomes a threat to their family as he befriends their teenage daughter on whom he seems to exert a perverted influence.
The Man in the Basement
A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his French teacher. Faced with this gifted and unusual pupil, the teacher rediscovers his enthusiasm for his work, but the boy’s intrusion will unleash a series of uncontrollable events.

Scarred for life after a harrowing near-death experience, emotionally fragile mother-to-be Sarah is still struggling to come to terms with her loss. Overcome with silent grief, Sarah now seeks solace in work; however, she is on a collision course with sheer terror when a knock at the door in the dead of night chills her bones to the marrow. Now, the raven-haired, late-night visitor in black wants something precious from Sarah, and will stop at nothing to get it.

A seemingly innocent man is abducted by a notorious L.A. serial killer, who forces his victims to switch roles with him so that he can enact his own capture, torture and murder.

A quiet and inconspicuous man rents an apartment in Paris where he finds himself drawn into a rabbit hole of dangerous paranoia.

Paul and Jennifer Hemdale have just moved into their dream house. But their happy marriage is about to be put to the test as they slowly discover the secret behind the black room in the cellar. Something else is already living in their new home and it is growing stronger every day.

Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl explores of the dark underside of the human psyche by entering Austrian basements fitted out as private domains for secrets and fetishes.

Alain and Marie moved to the suburb house of their dreams. But the real estate agent warned them: what is in the basement may well change their lives forever.

A student moves in with a family that lives in an underground house in the middle of the forest, far from civilization. His hopes of peace and quiet are soon shattered, when it becomes apparent that both the parents and their son have a screw loose.

In their blue hotel room, a clandestine couple of two married lovers plan an impossible future, as death shutters their already frail tranquillity. Now, the noose tightens more and more around innocents and sinners; but, was there a crime?

Looking for a fresh start after a miscarriage, a couple find themselves being gifted the house of their dreams with one caveat - they can never open the cellar door. Whether they can live without knowing triggers shocking consequences.

When Keira Woods' daughter mysteriously vanishes in the cellar of their new house in the country, she soon discovers there is an ancient and powerful entity controlling their home that she will have to face or risk losing her family's souls forever.

A French man spies on a lovely younger woman across the way. When he's spotted by the woman shortly after being questioned by the police about a local murder, the man's simple life becomes more complicated.

Unaware of its terrible history, a young couple purchases their dream home. But it soon becomes clear that they may not be alone in the house... and that someone -- or something -- is determined to drive them out.

Marc and Emma move into a new house but have no idea that their basement was a gay nightclub. To make matters worse, the club was destroyed by fire, and now the house is haunted by the ghosts of five gay clubbers.

In the town of Cutter, most people keep to themselves. But when John comes home to find his girlfriend missing, he sneaks into his neighbor's house, finding his girlfriend and several other kidnapped people tied up in the basement. When the neighbor come home, John is forced to get out of the house alive and lead the group to safety.

1956, in the north of France. A group of underground miners is forced to take a professor to take samples a thousand meters underground. After a landslide that prevents them from going back up, they discover a crypt from another time, and unknowingly awaken a legendary bloodthirsty creature.

Residents of a rundown French apartment building battle against an army of deadly, rapidly reproducing spiders.

Seemingly mild-mannered Henry Morrison has just murdered his entire family. After adopting a new identity and skipping town, he begins building a new relationship with a widow and her teenage daughter. However, he soon begins struggling to hide his true identity and maintain a grip on reality.

In Lille, Claire Gauthier is an ordinary married woman with a young daughter that works in an insurance company analyzing losses of insured properties. When the single veterinary Laurent Kessler claims damage in his basement caused by a flooding due to water leakage, Claire resolves the situation favorably for him. The weird Laurent visits Claire in her office successively, inviting her for drinks and lunch, and they get close to each other. Meanwhile, a serial killer is terrorizing Lille, killing women with a scalpel. Claire feels a great attraction for Laurent, who has an unusual behavior in her apartment. When Claire sees a scalpel in the pocket of Laurent's jacket, she fears him, but still loves him.

Chloé, a fragile young woman, falls in love with her psychoanalyst, Paul. A few months later she moves in with him, but soon discovers that her lover is concealing a part of his identity.

An unemployed executive is forced to sell his apartment. When he discovers that he still has the keys, he becomes obsessed with the family that now lives there and decides to recover the life he has lost, at any price.

Lucas and Clementine live peacefully in their isolated country house, but one night they wake up to strange noise. They're not alone... and a group of hooded assailants begin to terrorize them throughout the night.

Jacques and Martine, an ordinary bourgeois couple, invite to dinner a friend whom they have not seen the last ten years. Since then he has become a media star and everything has to go just right at dinner.

When the Diallo family return home from their holiday, they find the locks have been changed and the new occupants maintain they are in "their home". With no one to turn to, patriarch Paul gets closer to Mickey, a shady local man with a penchant for all things extreme and illegal. Soon the once anti-violent teacher is approaching the point of no return…

Juan and Sonia arrive at a large old house, an ideal place to raise their newborn son. When, one night before going to bed, they check the operation of the monitoring device installed in the baby's room, they discover that someone is sitting next to the crib.

The high-profile case of serial killer Ludovic Chevalier has just gone to trial, and Kelly-Anne is obsessed. When reality blurs with her morbid fantasies, she goes down a dark path to seek the final piece of the case’s puzzle.

After moving into a new neighbourhood, brothers Dane & Lucas and their neighbour Julie discover a bottomless hole in the basement of their home. They find that once the hole is exposed, evil is unleashed. With strange shadows lurking around every corner and nightmares coming to life, they are forced to come face to face with their darkest fears to put an end to the mystery of THE HOLE.

A runaway criminal breaks into an eerie chateau, taking its two frightened chambermaids hostage. As night falls, a group of mysterious aristocratic women arrive and the criminal begins to realize the women are hiding a sinister secret.

Sara is a teen girl who is looking forward to her 18th birthday to move away from her controlling father Don. But before she could even blow out the candles, Don imprisons her in the basement of their home.

Desperately seeking inspiration for the follow-up novel to his bestseller "Inexorable", Marcel Bellmer moves in his wife's old family mansion with his family.

Marco returns to Paris after his brother-in-law's suicide, where he targets the man his sister believes caused the tragedy – though he is ill-prepared for her secrets as they quickly muddy the waters.

The cruel and abusive headmaster of a boarding school, Michel Delassalle, is murdered by an unlikely duo -- his meek wife and the mistress he brazenly flaunts. The women become increasingly unhinged by a series of odd occurrences after Delassalle's corpse mysteriously disappears.

Agathe runs an art gallery. Her husband François is a publisher. Together they have one son, and in every way seem to be the picture of normality — but emotions are stewing under the surface. All it takes is the arrival of a complete stranger for things to start unravelling. Patrick is brash, uncouth and totally unselfconscious...

Two men, fortyish, worn out by their wives, abandon everything to go and live in the back of beyond. There they meet a truculent priest, a boozer, Émile who recalls them to life's simple pleasures. Calm is what they want. But soon their example inspires thousands of disorientated males...

Vincent finds himself under attack for no apparent reason overnight. When the phenomenon intensifies, he must run and change his way of life completely.

Jérémie returns to his hometown for the funeral of his former boss, the village baker. He decides to stay for a few days with Martine, the man's widow. A mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbor and a priest with strange intentions make Jérémie's short stay in the village take an unexpected turn.

A company president gets framed with a food-poisoning scandal and the only person who can help him is the evening cleaning-woman, who always seems to be at the right place at the right time.

A young couple out for a walk decide to take a stroll through a large cemetery. As darkness begins to fall they realize they can't find their way out, and soon their fears begin to overtake them.

In the shadowy outskirts of Paris, a desperate door-to-door salesman crosses paths with a mysterious young woman trapped in a grim world. As his obsession deepens, his grip on reality begins to slip—and the line between escape and destruction starts to blur.

Sebastien Nicolas is a reclusive realtor leading a double life – in his spare time he creates complex disguises based on acquaintances. Combined with minutely studied and rehearsed impersonations, Sebastien can disappear completely into other people's lives. Things spiral out of control after he impersonates the wrong man.

The head of a failing French family thinks that fate has smiled down on him when the daughter of a wealthy man agrees to be married to his son. The daughter and her aunt then travel out to the French countryside to meet with the family, unaware that a mysterious 'beast' is stalking the vicinity.

A white Bull Terrier named Baxter is given to an elderly woman by her daughter. As time passes, the dog develops aggressive and murderous behavior in order to be adopted by another family.

Freddie is an inept bank clerk with no future. His only hobby is collecting butterflies, which gives him a feeling of power and control that is otherwise totally missing from his life. He comes into a large sum of money and buys himself a country house. Still unable to make himself at ease socially, he starts to plan on acquiring a girlfriend - in the same manner as he collects butterflies. He prepares the cellar of the house to be a collecting jar and stalks his victim over several days.

A French diplomat is surveilled by a secret service to find a weakness for political control, his private life becoming 'File No. 51'.

In the heart of a city, the inhabitants of a tower wake up one morning to find that their building is shrouded in an opaque fog, obstructing doors and windows - a strange dark matter that devours anything that tries to pass through it. Trapped, the residents try to organize themselves, but to ensure their survival they gradually succumb to their most primitive instincts, until they sink into horror...

Emile Chenal and his wife, Françoise, leaned on boxing manager Jim Fox Warner to cough up the considerable sum of money that he owes them, with both the police and the mob circling the situation. In the same hotel, Inspector Neveu looks into a murder that took place years before, and his storyline overlaps with the arc of the Chenals.

Neighbors Spencer and Louise have bonded over their fascination with a recent string of murders terrorizing their community. When a new tenant named Victor moves into the building, all three quickly hit it off. However, they soon discover each has his or her own dark secret. As the violence outside mounts, the city retreats indoors for safety. But the more time these three neighbors spend together in their apartment building, the clearer it becomes that what they once thought of as a safe haven is as dangerous as any outside terrors they could imagine.

Rex and Saskia, a young couple in love, are on vacation. They stop at a busy service station and Saskia is abducted. After three years and no sign of Saskia, Rex begins receiving letters from the abductor.

Four prison inmates have been hatching a plan to literally dig out of jail when another prisoner, Claude Gaspard, is moved into their cell. They take a risk and share their plan with the newcomer. Over the course of three days, the prisoners and friends break through the concrete floor using a bed post and begin to make their way through the sewer system -- yet their escape is anything but assured.

Paul Braconnier and his wife Blandine only have one thing in mind: to find a way to kill each other without risk. After listening to a radio show, Paul decides to go to Paris to meet a famous lawyer in the acquittal of the murderers. He tells the lawyer that he killed his wife. The lawyer asks Paul to reconstruct the circumstances of the drama. Without knowing it, he explains, in spite of himself, the way for Paul to murder his wife by putting the odds on his side to avoid death penalty or even be released...

Gallery director Stanislas bolsters the development of modern art with his collection of surprising works. His newest acquisition is a sculpture by Gilbert, whose wife Josée is captivated by Stanislas. But unbeknownst to her, Stanislas is amassing photographs of a very perverse, disturbed nature.

Fred, a raffish safe blower, takes refuge in the Paris Metro after being chased by the henchmen of a shady businessman from whom he has just stolen some documents. While hiding out in the back rooms and conduits of the Metro, Fred encounters a subterranean society of eccentric characters and petty criminals.

Set in a magnificent villa near a sun-drenched St. Tropez, lovers Jean-Paul and Marianne are spending a happy, lazy summer holiday. Their only concern is to gratify their mutual passion - until the day when Marianne invites her former lover and his beautiful teenage daughter to spend a few days with them. From the first moment, a certain uneasiness and tension begin to develop between the four, which soon escalates in a dangerous love-game.

An ex-soldier with PTSD is hired to protect the wife and child of a wealthy Lebanese businessman while he's out of town.

A group of artists, composed of the young actors Wilfried and Matthieu and the actresses Sophie, Mathilde and the dumb Jeanne, is hired by a millionaire, Axel de Fersen, to present a performance of Little Red Riding Hood in his isolated castle to celebrate the birthday of his grandson. Meanwhile, the police advises that a serial killer is raping and killing young women in the woods around that area. During the night, the group feels trapped and threatened in the castle, guessing who is and where might be the killer.

A small-time con man on the run from the gangster-husband of his girlfriend hides out in a strange, brooding mansion run by two mysterious women, where he finds himself trapped in deception between the two women.

A man who suspects his wife is cheating on him begins having nightmarish visions of an evil presence that he believes inhabits his house.

Though no one can see him, Hollow Face lurks in the corners, desperately desiring love but only knowing how to spread fear and hate. He creeps into the life of John Farrow after Farrow’s beloved 13-year-old daughter Mia is assaulted in their home. The line between the real and the imaginary blurs as fissures start to open within the family unit. It seems that no security measure can keep Hollow Face out.

Insurance executive Charles suspects his wife Hélène of playing the field, so he has a private detective locate his wife's lover, author Victor Pegala.

A man's obsession with owning the designer deerskin jacket of his dreams leads him to turn his back on his humdrum life in the suburbs, blow his life savings, and even turn him to crime.

Emma has a strong aversion towards her family’s new house, especially the attic. After moving in, she becomes miserable and reclusive. The rest of her family also seems unhappy and unsettled. The situation escalates one day when Emma is in the attic alone. All of a sudden someone who looks exactly like Emma attacks her viciously.

A middle-aged man in a stagnant marriage, finds his life upended when an attractive young woman and her seemingly abusive husband move in next door.

A young couple, living in a campus apartment complex, are repeatedly harassed by an eccentric plumber, who subjects them to a series of bizarre mind games while making unnecessary repairs to their bathroom.

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.

After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts, finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him.

George, host of a television show focusing on literature, receives videos shot on the sly that feature his family, along with disturbing drawings that are difficult to interpret. He has no idea who has made and sent him the videos. Progressively, the contents of the videos become more personal, indicating that the sender has known George for a long time.

A young woman joins a theatrical troupe where she slowly believes that the director is involved with a secret group and that he is in grave danger.

A widower, his daughter, and his new wife move into a peaceful neighborhood. At first it appears to be a perfect neighborhood but the family quickly realize that something is not right about their new home.

Max is a former playboy who has decided to settle down by marrying his current love, Muriel. However, when Max catches a glimpse of the great lost love of his life, he becomes obsessed with rekindling their relationship.

Trapped inside a fortified home owned by a mysterious couple, a young boy quickly learns the true nature of the homicidal inhabitants, and secret creatures hidden deep within the walls.

Deep in the woods, a lost hiker stumbles upon the cabin of an erratic and reclusive old man. What starts off as cordial conversation soon turns dangerous as it becomes clear that one or both of them might be hiding a terrifying secret.

What if ... you let a stranger into your house to use your phone, but while you've been patiently waiting in the kitchen, he just disappears ... or does he? Félix, an architect who has just split up with his girl-friend and inhabits a huge mansion in Barcelona, finds out how many hiding places there really are in his house. But are there enough to hide another person, a strange parasite of living space? Or is Félix really going insane?

Following the death of her estranged father, Iris learns she has inherited a run-down, centuries-old pub. She travels to Berlin to identify her father’s body and meet with The Solicitor to discuss the estate. Little does she know, when the deed is signed she will become inextricably tied to an unspeakable entity that resides in the pub’s basement – Baghead – a shape-shifting creature that can transform into the dead.

A man descends into paranoia after trapping what he believes to be the devil in his basement, but things take a dark turn when his family unexpectedly arrive for Christmas.

Forced to work extremely hard to keep things afloat, Paul begins hearing voices in his head questioning his past choices. Convinced that his wife has been unfaithful, he begins to see every male guest as a potential threat. What follows is Paul's downward spiral into the madness of deranged jealousy where he finally discovers that hell is not a state of mind – hell is himself.

A young man falls in love with a beautiful woman being chased by sinister masked figures at night. He tries to track her down, and learns she's being held captive by his father and colleagues who believe she's a vampire.

Jessica Barrett, wife and mother of two young children, begins to show signs of demonic possession while pregnant with her third child. As she seeks help from her husband and doctor, a mysterious man approaches her and seems to have some answers.

Having finally secured her first assignment from her family's demolition business, Sam Walczak is sent to supervise the destruction of an apartment house, only to discover a group of tenants still living in the condemned building. One such tenant, Jimmy, tells Sam an urban legend about a serial murderer who used to live in the building and entomb his victims in the walls. What's worse, the dead are believed to still harass the residents to this day.

After World War I, a young ex-soldier, Sébastien Monge, returns to his home village. Ignorant of his past, he learns that, 24 years before, his entire family was slain in their home one stormy night. Only Sébastien, then a four-month old baby, was spared. Whilst Sébastien is being seduced by Charmaine, Dupin is killed by someone else. Sébastien’s next victim, the miller Didon Pujol, is also murdered before he has a chance to take his revenge. Sébastien realises that someone is watching his every move and is going to extraordinary lengths to protect him. But who, and why..?

Lucie, Ben and William search an old woman's home for a hidden treasure and they encounter a series of supernatural events that change them forever.

A psychological thriller about a young married couple who buys a beautiful Napa Valley house on several acres of land only to find that the man they bought it from refuses to let go of the property.

Bastien Grimaldy, a man driven to heightened anxiety as the plot against him begins to take effect. Bastien's personal relationships give him enough cause for anxiety -- between his new lover Laura and a feisty mother, life provides its own insecurities. When he goes to the police with his problems, Bastien is assigned an off-beat inspector to protect him but is still faced with skepticism about his dilemma.

Alphonse Tram is unwittingly involved in several murders despite having no memory of committing the crimes. His confusion lead him to confess to his neighbour, Inspector Morvandieu. Alphonse and Morvandieu become the axis around which murders occur.

A severely injured man and woman awake in an abandoned sanitarium only to discover that a sadistic caretaker holds the keys to their freedom and the horrific answers as to their true identity.

While on a joyride with the headlights turned off, two men hit and kill another man carrying a satchel full of money. The two men decide to take the money and throw the body into a pond and bury the money in a coal hill. The next morning the police discover the body of a kidnapped 12-year blind girl, Melody, in a warehouse near the site of the hit-and-run. They determine that the kidnapper saw the girl's father bringing the ransom to him and also witnessed the hit-and-run and the men stealing the ransom.

Michael Harding returns home from military school to find his mother happily in love and living with her new boyfriend, David. As the two men get to know each other, Michael becomes more and more suspicious of the man who is always there with a helpful hand. Is he really the man of her dreams or could David be hiding a dark side?

Madame Jouve, the narrator, tells the tragedy of Bernard and Mathilde. Bernard was living happily with his wife Arlette and his son Thomas. One day, a couple, Philippe and Mathilde Bauchard, moves into the next house. This is the accidental reunion of Bernard and Mathilde, who had a passionate love affair years ago. The relationship revives... A somber study of human feelings.

Tanguy is 28 years old and still living with his parents. They think it's time he moves out. He doesn't, so they hatch a plan.

Two young men seek the solitude of the country; their peace is disturbed when a set of random occurrences suggest to their susceptible minds a pattern with sinister meanings.

Algiers, 1938. Meursault, a quiet and unassuming employee in his early thirties, attends his mother's funeral without shedding a tear. The next day, he begins a casual affair with Marie, a work colleague. He quickly slips back into his usual routine. However, his daily life is soon about to be disrupted by his neighbor, Raymond Sintès, who draws Meursault into his shady dealings. Until one blisteringly hot day, a tragic event occurs on a beach...

A couple and their young son retreat to their woodland vacation home, only to face sinister neighbors who intend to kill them and steal their identities.

The sudden disappearance of a wealthy banker's wife cracks open a dizzying world of secret fetishes, desperate acts and elaborate deceptions.

Frank spends his summer days hopelessly searching for companionship at a popular cruising spot on the shores of a lake in rural France. One day, he meets Michel, an attractive yet darkly mysterious man and falls blindly in love.

Not long after John Chambers and his family arrive at their new home in a small country town of Pennsylvania, John begins to experience sleep paralysis. Lying there paralyzed, trapped within his own nightmare, other-worldly beings visit John. They are entities which exist in the darkest shadows of the night and can only be seen out of the corner of one's eye. These encounters begin to haunt John, transforming to complete terror as he discovers the entities' sole purpose... the abduction of his seven year old son. In the end, John will uncover the town's horrific secret, a portal on his land, and make one last attempt to save his son before the shadow people permanently take him away to their world.

It took Peggy Heller a long time to recover from the trauma of a brutal physical assault, suffered in her youth. When she married Robert, he provided her with the love and reassurance she craved for and the two settled down in a pretty house in the grounds of the public school where Robert was a master. But the headmaster of the school is not what he seems and Peggy is convinced he means to harm her - is her fear a figment of her tortured imagination or are there forces at work that intend to manipulate her anxieties with fatal consequences?

After 25 years together, married life has taken its toll on Xavier and Sophie, so when Sophie decides to invite their neighbours over for dinner, Xavier is less than enthusiastic to say the least! He can’t stand how obviously still in love they are and their lack of discretion… especially at night! On coming face-to-face with the uninhibited couple, Xavier and Sophie will be forced to confront their own, sad reality, before finding themselves pushed into a corner by a somewhat… indecent proposal.

Shortly after moving into a dark, brooding mansion, a psychologist and his co-workers are terrorized by a horrible evil being.

France, 1893. Joseph Bouvier attempts to shoot his love who refused to marry him and to commit suicide. Upon release from the filthy asylum where he was placed, with bullets still remaining in his head, he wanders the country roads and rapes and murders many teenagers over years. The judge Rousseau captures him, but to serve his ambition seeks to avoid that Bouvier is simply declared insane.

