A struggling woman is happy to start over as a housemaid for an affluent, elite couple.
Sydney Sweeney’s post-2024 box office glow-down continues with “The Housemaid,” an adaptation of the 2022 novel by Freida McFadden, directed (somewhat bafflingly) by Paul Feig, whose career has usually been defined by glossy, female-led comedies but has now decided to give psychological thrillers a try.
This would be where I say Feig should stick with comedy, but I’m not even a fan of his comedies.
Sydney Sweeney stars as Millie, a young woman seeking employment as a live-in housekeeper and nanny, on the run from her dark past. After one interview, Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), a rich, spoiled housewife married to Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), hires her. While the two initially get along, Nina’s treatment of Millie gradually worsens, with misunderstandings leading to insults and arguments. These sequences should be uncomfortable and tense, but thanks to Feig’s inappropriate use of his comedic sensibilities, the audience I was with was left in stitches at these fights.
Sydney Sweeney’s Millie’s sordid past and gradual unraveling should be the engine of the story’s tension, but it feels curiously hollow.
The twist halfway through does attempt to give the movie new life, but the story before it had failed to build the necessary tension for the second half to work effectively. There are also far too many questionable character motivations for the drama to ignite.
Elizabeth Perkins appears briefly as Evelyn, Andrew’s mother. She curiously drops a few catchphrases that are obviously the blueprint of her son’s abusive nature, but instead of exploring that cycle of abuse, her character goes completely unexamined. It feels like there’s an entire compelling chapter of this movie that goes missing.
Feig is entirely out of his element here. This movie could have been an easy win for a filmmaker whose sensibilities are rooted in horror and whose instincts for suspense are sharper, but what should be a compelling examination of the cycle of abuse turns into a revenge fantasy.
In Theaters Friday, December 19th
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I love it
This movie is much deeper than a revenge fantasy. Many women of different economic status share their binding understanding of the predatory abusive charming alpha male. While the reviewer dissects the construction of the plot, he de-emphasizes the empowerment sorority of women who have been bullied and pilloried. This movie deserves timely notice.