Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, The Housemaid represents an interesting meld of genre play within mysteries and thrillers. Director Paul Feig clearly wants to shock and tense up the audience with Hitchcock-level twists that veer the story in millions of directions, but the film also adds a silly tone that runs parallel to it. It’s very similar to Feig’s Simple Favor films in terms of knowing the trashy absurdity they reside in story-wise and playing it up to a tee, turning into full camp territory at various points.
In the case of The Housemaid, it lies somewhere in between the two Simple Favor films, where it never leans too much into its nonsense to the point of it being a fault like this year’s Another Simple Favor, but it’s never quite as streamlined as A Simple Favor, which is where Feig was most successful in this space. The Housemaid isn’t without its twisted moments of fun peril, and it helps when Amanda Seyfried is yet again giving it her all, but the film is never quite able to provide its desired impact whenever Seyfried isn’t chewing the scenery. Even within its faults, however, The Housemaid should provide enough over-the-top, romantic melodrama for book fans at the very least, but not much of anyone else.
The film’s set-up is simple enough, as it begins following Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney), a woman just doing whatever she can to live life after finally escaping her troubled past that’s haunted her for years. She’s struggling quite a bit to make ends meet and even sleeps in her car due to her lack of funds, but out of the blue, a miracle job seems to come into the palm of her hands when she accepts a live-in housemaid job from Nina Winchester (Seyfried). Nina tasks Millie with cleaning, cooking, and running errands for her and her husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), and everything for the job feels like a great opportunity for Millie to get back on her feet.
Of course, all is not what it seems as the more time passes, Nina starts to show herself as more unstable to Mille, having the most drastic mood swings on a dime, going from being kind and heartfelt to her one minute, to having rageful outbursts at her the next. It starts to become very clear to Mille that not all is what it seems within the Winchester household as secrets unravel about all these characters in the wildest reveals.
The meld of tones The Housemaid weaves through creates a film where not every element is as fully realized as the film wants it to be. Still, Amanda Seyfried easily remains the most convincing aspect throughout the film’s runtime. Seyfried sells every moment and shift Nina’s characterization goes through and is able to balance the movie’s more jokey scenes and still act as a great threatening chaos when need be, not knowing what direction her character could potentially head. She isn’t always able to save every piece of dialogue, but she clearly understands the tonal inflections more than the rest of the cast.
Where the film starts to falter is through its slow start and elongated runtime. The three-way dynamics between Nina, Millie, and Andrew are fun to witness for a while, but the film reaches a certain point where the screenplay becomes repetitive and less engaging on the whole until it finally takes a shift with its big twist. This isn’t helped when the film starts to run too long and explains every little aspect of why a certain twist makes sense, and it only starts regaining interest when the third act begins. More often than not, scenes can have this dead air to them, relying on awkward, cringe-worthy line readings that don’t match any vibe the film is going for.
There’s also just nothing special about Paul Feig’s visual direction behind the camera at all for a thriller that clearly wants to shock and awe. The visuals never truly hinder the film per se, and there’s the occasional creative use of a zoom or dissolve, but nothing about the cinematography stands out at all. The flat and drab look of the film is often the exact antithesis of the thrillers it’s inspired by. One could argue that the film doesn’t need it, but a more interesting direction could’ve elevated the already twisted material it’s working with.
Despite these issues, the one thing The Housemaid has going for its payoffs is within its finale. It’s where all the romantic tension and scheming the movie has been building towards bursts into a series of reveals and payoffs that actually set the film up as a crowd-pleaser of sorts despite predictable twists and turns. Even performances that are one note throughout the film’s first act become a lot more playful; Sweeney and Sklenar specifically finally come into their own, rolling a lot more into the fun of the film’s reveals, but in some respects, it can feel a bit too little too late at that point.
The Housemaid has its moments of successfully implementing the thrills and campy fun that it promises, but unfortunately runs a bit too long and struggles to capitalize on some of the tonal balancing between silly absurdity and captivating intensity until its final payoffs. While it will likely satisfy fans of its source material, The Housemaid doesn’t quite reach the heights to be anything more than an average thriller on the whole, at best, and a clunky misfire of tonal play within the thriller genre at worst.
The Housemaid will debut exclusively in theaters on December 19, 2025, courtesy of Lionsgate.
While it will likely satisfy fans of its source material, The Housemaid doesn't quite reach the heights to be anything more than an average thriller on the whole, at best, and a clunky misfire of tonal play within the thriller genre at worst.
Lover of film writing about film. Member of the Dallas Fort-Worth Critics Association. The more time passes, the more the medium of movies has become deeply intertwined with who I am.
