{"id":51066,"date":"2025-12-17T14:06:35","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T19:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=51066"},"modified":"2025-12-17T14:06:35","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T19:06:35","slug":"the-housemaid-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/17\/the-housemaid-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"The Housemaid [2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A new housemaid becomes involved with a family\u2019s secrets, sexiness, and scandal in Paul Feig\u2019s slyly satirical The Housemaid, based on the novel by Frieda McFadden.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In my review for the tepid remake of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle<\/a>, I wrote about my love of 90s psycho-sexual thrillers; self-aware, hefty slices of cheese playing to knowing, game adult audiences. Films that leaned into the melodrama (whether purpsofully or accidentally, no matter, still fun), such as Color of Night, Sleeping with the Enemy, Body of Evidence, Hush, or even Basic Instinct, slid out of theatres over time, nestling into a more comfortable existence to become the stereotypical Lifetime movie. In said review, I wrote of the lost subgenre: \u201cthe upcoming Housemaid seems to fit.\u201d\u00a0 Oooh boy, does it. The Housemaid, directed by Paul Feig and adapted by Rebecca Sonneshine from the 2022 novel by Frieda McFadden (the first in a trilogy), has all the aware energy of the sort, delving into the inane and insane that the subgenre has to offer. The book series has been described as \u201cairport or beach reading.\u201d The sort of pulpy paperback you read in light times, leaning into the entertainment value of the popcorn of it all. The Housemaid is just that. It\u2019s a rip-roaring crowdpleaser of pure enjoyment, mostly as there are a few stumbles along the way to dampen the effect. But on the whole, Feig\u00a0succeeds in reviving a dormant genre.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sydney Sweeney<\/a> plays Millie, a down-on-her-luck woman, hired to be the live-in housemaid (TITLE!) to Amanda Seyfried<\/a>\u2019s Nina, her charming, handsome husband Andrew, and their cold and spoiled daughter. As she settles in, we are giving so many delicious threads of where it will go. Who’s rocking and who is the cradle? Milile states straight up she\u2019s lying. In a nice touch, after we see her put on glasses after not needing them, she explains to us in voiceover that they\u2019re fake. A little thing, but it\u2019s Sonneshine and Feig telling the audience, \u201cWe know what you\u2019re going to be thinking, so let\u2019s have fun.\u201d We know we\u2019re going to be led along, on purpose, in various ways. Millie\u2019s been in prison, and the resume is a lie. Does Nina know? Does the husband? Is he as sexily clueless as he seems? What\u2019s with the ever-present, ruggledly handsome gardener with his cryptic messages and warnings?\u00a0 There\u2019s obviously some sort of game afoot, but who is playing whom? Everyone? It\u2019s not long before things are awry. The pristine house is a squalor, Nina\u2019s mood changes from day to day, lies, switches, and general chaos. What\u2019s the game? What\u2019s the truth? It\u2019s fun to try to solve it; along with the directly obvious set-ups and pay-offs, hanging like Swords of Damocles. Because we know, and you know, and they know, and Feig knows no one is on the level. Secrets, secrets are no fun\u2026 unless we\u2019re looking at the sort of movie. It\u2019s popcorn, fun popcorn, leaning into the delirious insanity and inanity.\u00a0<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fieg lends a simmering satire to the affair; here meaning the story itself\u2026 or is there more?. The melodrama is ramped up a little, not too much. I\u2019m taking this as a satire, with Fieg\u2019s background in working with comedy, especially character-based comedies that work around tropes and power dynamic stories of the haves and have-nots (it even permeates Bridesmaids<\/a>, but more directly in A Simple Favor and here). From Freaks and Geeks<\/a>, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call<\/a>, Spy<\/a> and especially A Simple Favor (of which straddles this sort of thing), he is keenly aware of conventions and expectations. But he does it in a just-aware-enough manner, never condescendingly looking at the subject matter. It\u2019s the best type of satire- one that works perfectly within its genre. I can absolutely see it being Poe\u2019s Lawed. Btw, Poe\u2019s Law essentially states that without a clear statement of intent, satire or parody may be taken as sincere. By golly, does Housemaid straddle the line. If taken sincerely, all the power. I love the idea that The Housemaid can be watched semi-ironically or fully invested in the melodrama, and both takes are equally valid.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the first half, it\u2019s a joy watching all the players move around the board. Feig, Sonnenshine, and McFadden lead the audience down various paths with hints, clues, and fun. Until it doesn\u2019t. For all the fun of the first hour, when the cards fall, the \u201ctwist\u201d is revealed (I was pretty much there, but wasn\u2019t sure how one fold was going to go), there are major stumbles in the second act. The energy dissipates, the spark goes. The film stops cold with the sly humor vanishing due to some direct abuse-based story points (keeping vague here, of course) and an endless, over-explaining, incredibly expositional voiceover. But it\u2019s tough to handle more direct abuse in that way; like the notorious Showgirls<\/a> is a wholly entertaining, hilarious mess, until an unnecessary rape scene takes the air out of the room. The Housemaid doesn\u2019t quite go that far, but some of what the middle covers just couldn\u2019t be taken with a smile; so I get it. But it\u2019s a tonal whiplash. It drags it down for far too long, after an hour of darkly humorous, low-key satirical, all in; it\u2019s a shift that doesn\u2019t work, jarring and taking out of the movie, betraying the length (feeling a little stretched at 131 minutes).<\/span><\/p>\n

However, have no fear, for once the twist\u2019s implications and backstories are out of the way, Feig gets right back on the original path for a bloody, violent, and crowd-pleasing finale.\u00a0 The Housemaid is just that: a big, crowd-pleasing movie. Even with the second act stumbles, the audience hooted and cheered, reacted with the right amount of Oohs and laughs (sometimes at the same time, indicating how various members were reading the film).\u00a0 When the payoffs happen, it’s fun and roaring and becomes aware of the cheese again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As Millie, Sydney Sweeney is fine; perhaps a bit bland (no gang-buster Immaculate<\/a> performance here) and that little squint she does before so many lines is frustrating, but this is Amanda Seyfried\u2019s movie. She understands the assignment. Unhinged and wild, coming incredibly close to the too-over-the-top line but never quite crossing it into pure parody. She\u2019s at one hundred the whole film, and I loved it. She screams, she crashes, she barks, she drools, she howls. She simmers down to a cool terror. As part of the character, one never knows how the next scene will go, or even the next line, as she cycles through every possible reading at any point. It\u2019s delicious and fantastic to chew on, along with the scenery. The third part of the triangle is Brandon Sklenar, seen earlier this year as the charming date in Drop<\/a>. He\u2019s a bit of a \u201cgeneric sexy dude\u201d and works when he\u2019s more mysterious, as the film progresses, and he has more to work with, not so much. He kinda runs at the same gear all film, to his detriment. She\u2019s not in much of the film, but I loved Elizabeth Perkins and cool menace as his mother.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Housemaid will play well with the crowds this holiday season. I\u2019m curious how many of our aunts and their friend groups will choose this over \u201cthat cute Neil Diamond movie\u201d (review for that next week). That\u2019s not a dig, just the audience. Paul Feig\u2019s adaptation of the bestselling novel is a fun one, harkening back to the thrillers of 30 years ago. I gotta love a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve, giving the audience just what it wants with game performers and crew.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new housemaid becomes involved with a family\u2019s secrets, sexiness, and scandal in Paul Feig\u2019s slyly satirical The Housemaid, based on the novel by Frieda McFadden.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,302,477,1087],"class_list":["post-51066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-drama","tag-horror","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51071,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51066\/revisions\/51071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}