Film Review – The Housemaid

December 18th, 2025 | POSTED BY Allen Almachar

The Housemaid (2025) – the big screen adaptation of the bestselling novel by Freida McFadden – contains just the right mix of cheese, trashiness, sexiness, humor, and thrills. It calls to mind ‘90s erotic thrillers you’d see on late night cable. The narratives were less concerned with plausibility and coherence and more on simply having fun. This operates in the same fashion. Director Paul Feig has experience in this field with A Simple Favor (2018) and (to a lesser degree) its sequel, Another Simple Favor (2025). Here, he gets back to basics, detailing a twisted tale of domestic turmoil. What starts off on shaky ground quickly stabilizes and elevates the further it goes, eventually hitting its stride in the third act. The movie rewards you for sticking with it.

Working with screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine, Feig weaves a suburban tale where nothing is what it seems and everyone has hidden agendas. Millie (Sydney Sweeney) finds herself in financial desperation after run ins with the law. Her luck changes when she’s interviewed by Nina (Amanda Seyfried) for a job as a stay in housemaid. Nina lives in a large, swanky home that could have come straight out of a magazine. Nina shares the house with her hunky spouse, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) and daughter Cecilia (Indiana Elle). Luckily for Millie, Nina is won over and offers her the job. Millie goes from sleeping in her car and eating fast food to staying in a luxurious house with all the amenities she could ask for. It’s a dream job, or so she thinks.

Almost immediately after Millie moves in, things start to go haywire. Nina, who seemed so pleasant and welcoming during their interview, demonstrates unhinged traits. She constantly orders Millie around with absurd tasks, contradicts herself all the time, and whenever Millie points out her inconsistencies, she flies off the handle and threatens to fire her. Thankfully, Andrew’s kind and considerate personality off sets Nina’s red flags, giving Millie a safety net. That is the extend of the story I’m willing to divulge. The Housemaid relies on all the surprises it has in store for us. It takes a premise involving a dysfunctional family and the housemaid that enters their circle and twists it in deranged ways. Some of these revelations are not all that revelatory. One example is the tension that develops between Millie and Andrew. Not much effort is put into hiding their immediate attraction, making an already awkward situation even worse.

In fact, the first half proves to be the weakest section, because it does a lot of setting up with its characters and story arcs, most of which is mechanical. Nina’s abrasive behavior, combined with Millie and Andrew barely keeping their hands off each other, plays as a kind of bizarre soap opera. Nina’s tendency to explode in a rampage is so over the top that it doesn’t seem like the actions of a real human being. The sexual heat between Millie and Andrew is more a necessity of plot rather than a natural development. Some of the dialogue between them is cringeworthy. We don’t believe they connect because they earnestly like each other rather than Sydney Sweeney and Brandon Sklenar being good looking people, so of course they would be tempted. And what’s going on with the gardener, Enzo (Michele Morrone)? Every time we see him, he stares at the other characters with a dead serious expression. The way he pops up in window frames and around corners is more hilarious than mysterious.

Granted, much of the clunkiness of the first half is explained by the second. The problem is that none of what we see at first is convincing, so when the truth is finally uncovered we kind of knew it was coming. It’s as though the writing/directing asks us to wait through a lot of corny material before things finally pick up. And when they do, that’s when the film starts to shine. Once the narrative settles in and the dominoes start to fall, that’s when the enjoyment level skyrockets. The cinematography (John Schwartzman) and production design (Elizabeth J. Jones) successfully turn Nina and Andrew’s home into a house of horrors. The pristine countertops and white cabinets amplify the stark red of splattered blood. Hallways and staircases transform into harbingers of doom, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere where escape is near impossible. We go from an exaggerated melodrama to a dark thriller, where elements of body horror come into play. The story gets funnier as it gets more extreme. Feig does a good job of managing the various tones. We find ourselves squirming at the violence and gore but laughing at the same time.

The entire cast commit to their respective parts. Amanda Seyfried has arguably the toughest role as Nina. She’s asked to perform at such a highwire that the character borders on caricature. But she reigns it in just enough to keep us from being completely shut off, eventually showing us the method to Nina’s madness. Brandon Sklenar inhabits Andrew with more nuance than your typical handsome husband. Andrew has plenty of quirks and eccentricities. He has an odd relationship with his mother (Elizabeth Perkins) and an unhealthy obsession with his family’s priceless chinaware. Sklenar also gets the chance to show his comedic chops as well, turning Andrew into more of a goofball than anticipated. And as for Sydney Sweeney, this continues her run of interesting career choices. While Christy (2025) may have been a more substantial dramatic role, Sweeney’s work as Millie shows her having a blast playing different levels of emotion. She plays Millie as scared, desperate, confused, infatuated, sexy, conniving, smart, exasperated, etc. The crazier things got, the more fun Sweeney appears to be having.

I was on the fence with The Housemaid throughout its first half. Once the narrative ball started rolling, however, I was on board. Paul Feig and his team created a story that embraces its sleaziness and dark humor. It has its rough spots and questionable leaps in logic, but a lot of that can be forgiven through its entertainment value. Having a preposterous story ends up being one of the film’s biggest advantages. It does leave an opening for future installments, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more of this world. When you have characters acting this bad, that can only be a good thing.  

A Simple Favor, Amanda Seyfried, Another Simple Favor, Brandon Sklenar, Christy, Elizabeth J. Jones, Elizabeth Perkins, Freida McFadden, Indiana Elle, John Scwartzman, Michele Morrone, Paul Feig, Rebecca Sonnenshine, Sydney Sweeney, The Housemaid