The Housemaid: Movie Review

Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Indiana Elle, Elizabeth Perkins
Director: Paul Feig

Based on the 2022 novel of the same name by author Freida McFadden, The Housemaid arrives with the kind of expectation that many psychological thrillers did back in the 1990s.

And that the A Simple Favor director Paul Feig, who's made a career of these kind of twisty yuppies in peril and how the other half live stories of late, is attached makes it a slightly more delicious prospect.

Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney is Millie, a down-on-her-luck woman, who's sleeping in her car and desperate to get a job. Chancing upon an ad for a housemaid at the Winchester residence, she meets with Amanda Seyfried's Nina, a socialite who seems to have it all - except time for hosuework.

Offered the job, she moves in but soon finds the job is more than she expected after an outburst from Nina shocks her. But as Millie grows closer to Nina's husband Andrew (It Ends With Us' Sklenar), she edges nearer to crossing a line.

While The Housemaid looks polished and slick, once you begin to peel back its veneer, the story seems like it's slightly shallow and less edgy than you'd expect. 

Sweeney is perfectly fine as the seemingly naive central character, her doubts manifested by her employer's mood swings and seemingly irrational edges, but she never really breaks out of the tropes of the character to play something that's truly compelling, given her character's arc.

Far more successful is Seyfried as Nina, who channels an edginess and uncertainty that's ripe for what takes place. At times, she veers close to OTT, but brings the darkness of the story of her character vividly to life - and seizes on what's expected of her with ease.

Ultimately, The Housemaid is solid enough escapist fare, but with the chance of a sequel being unleashed given how the book ends, it starts to feel like what should have been a solid one-off a la The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Fatal Attraction feels a little more of a cynically told first part opener.

(And it'll be interesting to see if the film's lack of trigger warnings makes it a spiritual successor to It Ends With Us' shocks too.)

The Housemaid could have soared if it had leaned into its darkness a little more and broke away from the novel's safer edges. As it is, it represents a well-told story that sees only some of its cast push the boundaries in a slickly produced piece of popcorn fare.