The Housemaid

Due to its content and source material, Paul Feig’s domestic psychological thriller film The Housemaid asks a lot from the viewer in terms of plausibility, perception, and plot turns in its narrative thread. However, it’s so thrilling and just an absolute blast at the movies, especially for genre lovers of suspense films. If anything, it feels like an Americanized version of a modern Korean film or even a throwback to 90s erotic thrillers like Single White Female, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, To Die For, and Wild Things. The twists and turns and third act are certainly inspired by David Fincher’s Gone Girl, and I just couldn’t look away.

Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney), who lives in her car and is on probation, ends up landing a job as a live-in housemaid at the home of a very wealthy family in Great Neck, Long Island. Her room is in an attic with a high ceiling window that doesn’t open, and the locks are on the outside. Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) is the mother and wife of the family, and at first Nina shows immense appreciation and kindness towards Millie until one day she snaps at her after she accuses her of throwing out her notes on a speech that she prepared for her daughter’s PTA meeting. It becomes clearer that Nina shows signs of mental illness. As Millie is serving tea, she hears from her fellow wealthy housewife neighbors that Nina tried to end her own life by overdose and that she tried drowning her daughter when she was a toddler. We also see a shy gardener named Enzo (Michele Morrone) who lurks in and out of the exteriors of the house, saying a few words who expresses a lot with no words in his eyes to Millie that something is off.

Nina continues to degrade Millie in very struggling ways, but Millie desperately needs the job for her parole. Nina’s husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), is a wealthy and successful tech mogul who inherited his father’s data tech business and is unsettled by Nina’s mistreatment of Millie. He shows sympathy to Millie after Nina accuses Millie of arranging the wrong weekend to see an expensive Broadway play where the tickets are non-refundable. The arrangements overlap with other plans that Nina had that day to take their daughter Cecelia (Indiana Elle) to a camping retreat for the night. However, it all ends up becoming a scheme for Nina to test Andrew’s fidelity and to further escalate her animosity towards Millie. This build-up pivots to further exposition, backstories, and perspectives that are structured a lot like Gone Girl.

Courtesy Lionsgate

The directing by Paul Feig, who has mostly directed comedies, ends up executing the film with some satire and equal amounts of intentional camp. The second half of the film is very self-aware, as we see further perspectives from both Millie and Nina, where Feig is serviceable to Frieda McFadden’s grocery store novel that is adapted by Rebecca Sonnenschein. There are a lot of twists and turns with the characters, and we end up changing perspectives and building empathy for Nina as we see power dynamics change.

It can be a little over-the-top as we lose ourselves in the thread, but this approach makes the material highly thrilling and equally funny. The story does ask for a lot of plot holes to be forgiven, and some contrivances are conveniently sneaked in to forgive those plot holes, but Feig achieves a pleasing thriller that is undeniably exhilarating, and the emotions between Seyfried and Sweeney pay off. It’s difficult to not be rooting for them as the third act gets moving.

What’s interesting about the film is how Sydney Sweeney continues to show just how dedicated and fearless of an actress she can be. Her outstanding performance as female boxer Christy Martin is sadly being overlooked due to politics and low box-office performance from mismarketing and misjudgments on the rollout, but Sweeney continues to prove just how much range she has with her emotions. Even when it seems like Sweeney is playing it casual, she ends up pulling out a performance that holds vulnerabilities where she molds her character’s courage and vigor. Seyfried’s performance in this holds the most range, and the contrast in how she can flip like a light switch is quite awe-inspiring.

Finally, fans of 90s domestic thriller films who thought those films were in a bygone era should rejoice. It’s part throwback to that style of filmmaking, and it’s filled with twists and turns, over-the-top histrionics, characters, and its lurid exuberance makes it the ultimate guilty pleasure movie of the year.

GRADE B

THE HOUSEMAID IS NOW SHOWING IN THEATERS EVERYWHERE