‘The Housemaid’ Review: Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried lead absurd thriller about domestic life from hell
Deception can be its own art form on the big screen — if it is well executed. Otherwise, it can be a chore. The latter was how it felt watching “The Housemaid.”
The relationship between Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney) and Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) was built entirely on deception. The film begins with Millie sitting down for an interview with Nina to be the family’s live-in housemaid. Millie presents herself as an overqualified applicant, but in reality, she’s living out of her car and struggling to find work since she’s out on parole from a prison sentence she was serving. She doesn’t even need the glasses she wore in the interview, and she made up everything on her resumé, which is why she was shocked that she landed the job.
Meanwhile, Nina presents herself as a bubbly, put-together mother who keeps her luxurious home tidy. But when Millie shows up for her first day on the job, the house is an utter mess and Nina is completely scatter-brained.
Millie has various tasks like cleaning, cooking, picking up Nina’s snobby daughter Cici (Indiana Elle) from ballet class. Pretty normal stuff, right? But what isn’t exactly normal is Millie’s living situation. Nina sets her up in perhaps the sketchiest guest room; a small attic with a tiny window that doesn’t open and a door that locks from the outside. Millie immediately requests a key and a new window and Nina concedes the bad optics, jokingly saying, “What kind of monsters are we?”
Nina’s personnel decision comes as a surprise to Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), her dreamy husband who quickly sneaks into Millie’s fantasies.
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It doesn’t take long before Millie realizes how Nina is a real nutcase, going completely berserk as she accuses her new housemaid of misplacing her much-needed PTA notes for a meeting she’s attending. Andrew is able to calm her down, but Nina maintains a scornful resentment toward Millie that only builds. Andrew, however, shows her kindness.
What unfolds is the peeling of an onion with plot twist after plot twist. And a narration-dominated second act that’s meant to flip everything on its head seems more like a creative copout. Instead of naturally feeling mounting anxiety, I found myself chuckling at the increasing absurdity.
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Sweeney and Sklenar have one main objective: be sexy onscreen. That they accomplish. Their performances offer not much else, though they’re their most fun in the third act. Seyfried does go all in as the seemingly deranged Nina.
Paul Feig, best known for directing comedies like “Bridesmaids,” has had a thriller itch ever since 2018’s “A Simple Favor,” which this attempts to be. However, “A Simple Favor” is far superior with an intricate plot and well-earned laughs. “The Housemaid,” adapted from Freida McFadden’s 2022 novel, comes off like a campy Lifetime soap getting laughs for the wrong reasons.
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There may be a target audience that will eat it up, but “The Housemaid” is a mess of a movie that Sweeney and Seyfried can’t clean up despite their best efforts. On a scale between setting the table to scrubbing a nasty toilet, this rates closer to taking out the garbage.
“The Housemaid” is rated R for strong/bloody violent content, sexual assault, sexual content, nudity and language. Running time: 2 hours, 11 minutes. In theaters now.
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