Review: Bonkers thriller ‘The Housemaid’ ramps up to a gleeful level of adults-only insanity
2025 / Dir. Paul Feig
☆ 3.5/5
Watch if you like: A Grade-A “trash” mix of Gone Girl, The Handmaiden, guilty-pleasure erotic thrillers, hysterical Lifetime movies, and a dash of Mommie Dearest camp. You also understand that juice and haircare are privileges around this house!
Bonkers twists, campy writing, and Amanda Seyfried’s delightfully unhinged performance make The Housemaid a ridiculous popcorn flick that had me cackling and captivated. This is not high art by any means and shouldn’t be evaluated as such, but for those looking for dumb fun, a rollercoaster date movie, or a “trashy” post-Gone Girl riff, it will leave you grinning, or dumbfounded, depending upon your tastes.
Sydney Sweeney plays Millie, an ex-con out on parole who thinks she’s struck gold when she is offered a job as a live-in maid for the chipper wife (Amanda Seyfried) of a finance bro (Brandon Sklenar). Considering she’s had a year of controversy and roles that failed to make a cultural dent, it feels like the perfect role for Sweeney, who is surely hoping she can finish 2025 with a win.
While the job seemed like a dream during the interview, the house is a complete mess when she shows up for her first day of work, and Seyfried’s character, Nina Winchester, is a nightmare of a boss that Millie has to appease or else risk having to finish the last five years of her sentence. If Sydney Sweeney doesn’t totally sell playing an ex-con with a complicated past, it’s Seyfried’s show, displaying a wide range of both campy, deranged behavior and total vulnerability. Her habit of popping up directly behind Millie and not knowing what’s next is part of the fun in the first hour.
If the boilerplate Lifetime-movie plot that sees Millie drifting toward Nina’s husband, Andrew, as the seemingly hunky anchor of stability that she wishes she’d stop having sexy dreams about and accidentally running into in the middle of the night seems too on the nose, that’s by design, and a midway gearshift full of twists is about to pull the rug under you. While it doesn’t reach the peak excesses of a Brian De Palma or Paul Verhoeven, The Housemaid really goes for it, ramping up to a gleeful level of adults-only insanity. (Word of warning: anyone who doesn’t want to subject themselves to onscreen domestic violence should steer clear of this one.)
Similar to Gone Girl, and in line with Paul Feig’s (Tim in Heavyweights) previous A Simple Favor movies, The Housemaid smartly plays things straight while seemingly understanding the absurdity of its source material (based on a hit book by Freida McFadden). On top of Seyfried’s performance and the extra corny soundtrack needle drops, a particular character’s hidden desires for manners and propriety are so silly—drag queens are going to have a field day with some of the “No wire hangers…ever!” dialogue—that there’s no way the creators of this movie don’t understand what they’re doing.
Evaluating The Housemaid on its own merits, and not next to Citizen Kane, my main gripe is why the movie has to look so bland. Millie is supposed to be dazzled by the Winchesters’ home, which is depicted as a cottagecore, beige-mom mansion. The all-white WASP-y mom clothes Nina wears and gives as castoffs to Millie, who loves them, don’t make sense for this young woman to covet. And a romantic date Millie has in the city that ends up at an old-school NYC dark-wood steakhouse doesn’t make sense for someone trying to be seduced, nor does it make sense given later character revelations. Then again, “Cloud Dancer” was named Pantone’s Color of the Year, so what do I know?
As De Palma and Verhoeven knew very well, or as any Italian giallo thriller would, this type of over-the-top script is an opportunity to let loose and play around with style and art direction. Paul Feig nails the tone of The Housemaid, and the direction is serviceable, but I wish there had been a push to elevate it beyond the look of your average streaming release.
You already know, though, if The Housemaid is going to be your thing or not. If you’re like me and enjoy a nutty erotic thriller, then you won’t be disappointed.