The Housemaid Review: Sydney Sweeney And Amanda Seyfried Lead Paul Feig's Excellent, Wicked Drama

Paul Feig is a great filmmaker, provided you give him a great script. As a comedy director, Feig often flounders, unwisely allowing his cast of comedians to indulge in insufferable improv and unfunny chatter, perhaps hoping to find comedy organically. He'll then edit them in a slow and unappealing fashion, stretching an ostensibly light and bubbly film to the breaking point of tolerability. His cop comedy "The Heat" is 117 minutes. His spy comedy "Spy" is 120 minutes. His insufferable take on "Ghostbusters" was 116 minutes, which was about 115 minutes too long. 

But hand him a script that is tight and wicked and pointed, and he thrives. One needn't look further than 2018's "A Simple Favor" to see Feig's greatest strengths in action. That film, written by Jessica Sharzer, was a twisted, tense, marvelously campy soap opera, dripping with queer energy and laced with catty barbs. It helped that its two leads — Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively — 100% understood the assignment. Feig clearly has an affinity for the complex clashes between women of different classes. Feig found his niche with "Favor," and many fans of that film (myself included) wanted to see if he'd ever tackled similar material again.

We got our wish with "The Housemaid." Written by Rebecca Sonnenshine, based on a novel by Freida McFadden, "The Housemaid" is another excellent, wicked drama about the interplay between a rich woman and the woman she hires, but is now darker and more aggressive. There's much less camp this time. Feig's film is expressly about class and abuse, and the way women can come to resent and victimize one another ... but also how they can form a bond of solidarity within an abusive web. 

Sadly, there are so many twists in "The Housemaid," discussing the plot requires caution. 

Sydney Sweeney plays Millie, a down-on-her-luck ex-con who is sleeping out of her car and desperate for a job. At the beginning of the film, Millie arrives at the enormous, palatial home of the blue-blood Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) interviewing for a live-in maid position. The job will involve cooking and cleaning, and living in an upstairs attic bedroom. Those who have read "Jane Eyre" will sense immediately that something horrible may happen in that bedroom, especially since it only seems to lock from the outside. Nina is all chirps and sunshine and politeness during the interview, and it seems for a moment that Millie has found a friend in Nina as well as a wealthy benefactor.

But the first day on the job proves that the sunshine was a front. Nina throws a tantrum in the morning, breaking dishes and accusing Millie of stealing. As her employ continues, Nina proves to be a boss from hell, making completely irrational demands, and then claiming not to have made those demands after Millie breaks her back to fulfill them. Millie, on the cusp of parole, needs to keep the job, and tolerates every indignity. She is even hated by Nina's daughter, the seven-year-old Cecilia (Indiana Elle).

Millie seemingly has an ally in Nina's husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) the Most Decent Man in the World. Like his role in "Drop" from earlier this year, Sklenar is the perfect man, possessing the patience of a god, and able to diffuse any situation with his preternatural calm and his dazzling smile. Naturally, Millie will have to fight off her own sexual fantasies about him.

This is where I have to stop describing the plot as to not spoil any of it's more lascivious and delightful twists. Know, however, that we'll get to know a lot more about Millie's backstory, and even more about Nina's and Andrew's. Indeed, Seyfried gives a truly excellent performance as Nina, a woman who has very good reasons to be suffering from a nervous breakdown. Her delicate, over-the-edge characterization is balanced well by Sweeney's performance, who plays Millie as rough-hewn and earthy. The two actresses have unexpected chemistry, like they could be friends in a parallel universe, even though they have nothing in common other than ... well, I certainly won't say anything. 

Some of the plot twists in "Housemaid" might be predictable, but Feig handles his script so deftly, it's still a delight to see them uncovered, even if you saw them coming. Admirably, one of the film's biggest twists comes only halfway through the film, and Feig manages to rearrange the drama to have entirely new stakes. Anyone hoping that "The Housemaid" will have an explosive finale can rest easy. There will be blood. 

As mentioned, "The Housemaid" is about abuse. It's about the well-moneyed prisons that women are trapped in, and the undue resentments that can grow. Nina is surrounded by clucking, rude gossips — a bunch of rich white sharks — who tear her apart as soon as she leaves the room. Is it true she [scandal redacted]? Nina is also under the thumb of Andrew's gestapo-ready mother Evelyn (Elizabeth Perkins), a woman who makes the Ice Queen from "The Chronicles of Narnia" look like a huggable, Burl Ives type. Millie would like to sympathize, but she's more so just lost in the twisted realm of the bourgeoisie.

By the end — again, not to give anything away — there is not just a sense of solidarity between Millie and Nina, but a path forward. There is even an implication that frontier justice is at hand, even in the widely-spaced, ultrarich land of upstate New York. "The Housemaid" borrows elements from "Jane Eyre," "Gone Girl," "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle," "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?," and any number of early-'80s soap operas to form an immensely enjoyable thriller. 

To repeat: if you hand Paul Feig a good script, he becomes a better director. With "The Housemaid," he doesn't just explore his characters well, but wisely delves into themes of class. The dishonesty of the rich dangles over "The Housemaid," pointing out how wealth is a moral trap. It's alluring and dangerous. Wealth is practically a living creature. It seems to be dazzling and charming and seductive, but hides its true intentions, fangs secretly in its otherwise perfect smile. 

One might have a lot more fun with "A Simple Favor," but "The Housemaid" is among Feig's best work. Although he has spent the bulk of his career as a comedian, Feig might be wiser to lean into twisted feminist parables in the world of the ultra-wealthy. His comedy films make money, but his comedic instincts as a director seem off-base. But put him in the driver's seat of soap operas, and he is merely that much more assured. Leave Feig to films like "The Housemaid" moving forward. He seems to be better at it. 

/Film Rating: 8 out of 10

"The Housemaid" opens in theaters on December 19, 2025.