The Housemaid: Sydney Sweeney – Photo: Daniel McFadden/Lionsgate
The blonde, busty housekeeper Millie portrayed by Sydney Sweeney in The Housemaid brushes off several early signs that all is not as it appears inside the posh Long Island home of the Winchesters, where she has just been hired.
Some of the signs are so glaring that they play like punchlines. “Welcome, Millie. Here’s your room in the attic, with just one window waaaay up there that doesn’t open, and a door that locks from the outside. And be as loud as you want, because no one can hear you all the way downstairs.”
Adapting Freida McFadden’s bestselling 2022 novel — the first in a series of three Housemaid books, so far — director Paul Feig and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine inject winking humor into a setup bristling with dread and paranoia. In concept, we’re watching a psychological thriller, but the tongue-in-cheek tone is what usually prevails.
Feig managed a similar tonal mix in the 2018 Blake Lively-Anna Kendrick hit A Simple Favor and its sequel Another Simple Favor, released on Prime earlier this year. At least the first of those films, based on the novel by Darcey Bell, better hides its twists than The Housemaid, which dips into unnerving territory in its second half, but isn’t a smart enough thriller to really pull the rug out from under its audience.
The movie simmers with sexual tension, though, between Sweeney’s nubile maid and the man of the house, generationally wealthy data tech CEO Andrew Winchester, played by Brandon Sklenar. Between Andrew traipsing around in an array of guns-baring tank tops, and Millie’s working wardrobe of tight, plunging necklines, it’s only a matter of time before both come bursting out of their shirts (and other garments).
And no one in the household appears more aware of the brewing storm than the lady of the house, Andrew’s wife Nina, portrayed by Amanda Seyfried in the film’s most dynamic performance. While Sweeney and Sklenar play out their characters’ titillating tango with the subtlety of soap stars, Seyfried’s practically doing O’Neill as picture-perfect rich wife and mom Nina, who, of course, is far from perfect.
Nina hires Millie after suspiciously little vetting for a job that involves looking after the Winchesters’ young daughter CeCe (Indiana Elle, a sarcastic delight), but then she monitors her maid like a hawk. By turns, she can be warm and friendly, or imperious, cold, and impossibly demanding. Her moods swing wildly, and Seyfried swings big to capture her sometimes startling unpredictability.
Nina keeps Millie on her toes, and pulls much of the weight of keeping the film engaging. Eventually, after the first-half tease, laced with laughs both intentional and not, the movie makes a sharp turn to subvert expectations of who’s being set up as the victim in this scenario. Then it twists again at the hands of the film’s cruelly sadistic villain.
Where the twists might end, one can pretty much guess, despite weak attempts at misdirection, like the one or two completely pointless supporting characters bouncing around the plot. Although that does not include Elizabeth Perkins as Andrew’s mother, icy matriarch Evelyn Winchester, whose weirdness explains a lot about how her son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter behave.
Genuine shocks and scares are few, though Feig uses flashes of gruesome, bloody violence effectively to build suspense. The knowing voiceover narration — first from Millie, then Nina — is not as effective and a little too cutesy, trading mystery and chills for a few chuckles.
The Housemaid (★★☆☆☆) is Rated R and playing in theaters nationwide. Visit fandango.com.
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