‘The Housemaid’ Review: Amanda Seyfried And Sydney Sweeney Go For It In Paul Feig’s Psychotic Screen Version Of Trashy Popular Novel
Freida McFadden’s enormously popular novel The Housemaid sold 3.5 million copies to date, has stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for 130 weeks and has been translated into 45 languages. Clearly there is a market for this kind of twisty thriller, and you can see why Paul Feig wanted to bring it to the screen. Even if this female-driven tale marches right up to the edge of horror, it is more in the tradition of a ’40s-style melodrama pitting two female stars against each other. The only difference is it is on speed, a heightened operatic ride in which the dynamics among the three main characters are constantly changing so that you don’t know what has hit you by the time it ends.
If ever a movie deserved the word “dizzying” it is The Housemaid, a trashily entertaining affair that turns Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney into modern-day Davis and Crawford, like something out of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? mashed up with a ’90s-style female thriller like Single White Female, or Hand That Rocks the Cradle, but teetering on the edge of cinematic insanity. Feig himself describes it cheekily as a Nancy Meyers-type lavishly appointed world — if it turned terribly wrong. He’s on to something.
Millie Calloway (Sweeney) heads into the high-end, plush mansion of Nina Winchester (Seyfried) and her husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) to interview for a job as the new live-in housemaid. It is a job we learn she desperately needs in order to come back from a devastating past she keeps secret (I will tell you: she is out of prison); she is anxious to start over. Nina seems like a kind potential employer and it all goes very well — until it doesn’t. Millie is hired but in no time sees a side of Nina she didn’t suspect. This woman is unhinged, a demanding person on the edge where nothing Millie does is good enough. One early incident is thoroughly disturbing in which Nina goes ballistic after misplacing a personal item, immediately terrorizing Millie and Andrew, her supportive hubby, as she goes all psycho in laying the blame. We see immediately The Housemaid is not what we thought it might be, meaning the old trope where the new hire is really the crazy one, not the employer. But hang on, Feig and his screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine will be piling on so many twists in this thing you will think you are a pretzel by the time it finally crash-lands into its finale.
As it goes along I found my mouth agape at the sheer audacity of the story and its heightened horror: What you thought you knew is not the case and taken to such extremes it defies belief, which is precisely the point here. The book, and now the movie, wants to keep changing the stakes. Each of these main characters go from one level to another, back and forth, so that you are never sure who you are rooting for. Everyone in it has a past, and as the layers present themselves Feig takes us right to the edge of the cliff. It’s mad fun that you might hate yourself for indulging in, but it’s also undeniably entertaining if you are in the groove for it.
It would be critical malpractice to really get into a lot of plot details. This is a movie you just have to let happen to you, to go on the journey of this wealth-porn saga and revel in its unapologetic trashiness. In some ways it reminded me of last year’s deceptive house of horror movie Heretic with Hugh Grant in a surprising kind of role, but this isn’t that kind of terrifying. At times you will laugh out loud at the incredulous goings-on, and Feig really knows how to milk the humor even though this isn’t what you would call a comedy. He is also the perfect new-age George Cukor, a man who is clearly adept at directing women in movies like Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters and Another Simple Favor. In fact, Housemaid is like Another Simple Favor on steroids.
As for the stars, Seyfried is a real hoot getting to chew the pretty scenery with such force you will feel like arresting her for overacting — but that is all on purpose and deliciously fun to watch her lose it. Sweeney swings for the fences as well but takes her sweet time, at first observing this nightmare situation more subtly but then finding any which way to get out of the trap in which she finds herself stuck. Sklenar has perhaps the trickiest role but gets his moments, we just have to wait for them. Also in the mix is young Indiana Elle as the couple’s bratty 11-year-old daughter Cece, Michele Morrone as the mysterious Italian gardener Enzo, and an icily good Elizabeth Perkins as David’s demanding mother Evelyn Winchester.
This is the kind of movie where everyone seems to have a secret, a past, a problem. It sails over the top on purpose, and it undoubtedly is, for me at least, the guilty pleasure of the season.
Producers are Todd Lieberman and Laura Fischer.
Title: The Housemaid
Distributor: Lionsgate
Release date: December 19, 2025
Director: Paul Feig
Screenwriter: Rebecca Sonnenshine
Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Sydney Sweeney, Brandon Sklenar, Elizabeth Perkins, Michele Morrone, Indiana Elle
Rating: R
Running time: 2 hr 11 mins
