The Housemaid (2025)
Directed by: Paul Feig
Premise: Based on the novel by Freida McFadden. A woman (Sydney Sweeney) takes a job as a live-in domestic worker for a wealthy family. The wife (Amanda Seyfried) shows signs of being mentally disturbed.
What Works: The Housemaid primarily works because of the performances by Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried. Sweeney plays a woman with a secret who is walking on eggshells around an increasingly erratic employer. She conveys the panic and fear of being fired at any moment. Seyfried gets the showier role as the wife who is falling to pieces. Seyfried exudes a sense of danger, both to herself and to others, but also an element of camp. Sweeney and Seyfried carry the movie and their back and forth is engaging. The relationship between these characters pays off in the end. The story takes a bonkers turn quite late in a way that plays to the core audience. The filmmakers of The Housemaid understand the kind of movie they are making and who they are making it for; the film appeals to a contemporary feminist sensibility and does so effectively.
What Doesn’t: The Housemaid is a throwback to the thrillers of the 1990s like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and Sleeping with the Enemy. The film uses a lot of the cliches of that genre such as the mirror gag. Like a lot of Paul Feig movies, the cinematography and production design are impeccable and clean. Feig’s style complements the characters and themes but it counteracts the intended eroticism. The visual style is too sterile to be sexy. The movie feels stuck between a full on hard-R erotic thriller and a moderate PG-13 sensibility. The sexuality and violence go just far enough for the R-rating but the filmmakers don’t commit to it. The plotting of The Housemaid is overelaborate and absurd. The subplot of the groundskeeper (Michele Morrone) goes nowhere. There is a major reversal of expectation; characters are not who they present themselves to be and the filmmakers redirect the audience’s sympathies. There is no foreshadowing at all. As the husband, actor Brandon Sklenar does not suggest any menace and his character doesn’t make sense. He’s a guy who is in control of everything but he is entirely passive while his wife hires a live-in maid and does nothing as her behavior becomes increasingly erratic. The filmmakers come across so excited to fool the audience in the end that they don’t layout a coherent plot. The characters and the storytelling feel contorted to accommodate the big twist.
Bottom Line: The Housemaid isn’t great filmmaking. It’s quite dumb but also kind of fun. This is essentially an R-rated Hallmark Channel domestic thriller. The filmmakers have succeeded in making an entertaining thriller that will appeal to its intended audience.
Episode: #1081 (January 4, 2026)