Producers: Todd Lieberman, Laura Fischer and Paul Feig Director: Paul Feig Screenplay: Rebecca Sonnenshine Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Sydney Sweeney, Brandon Sklenar, Michele Morrone, Elizabeth Perkins, Indiana Elle, Amanda Joy Erickson, Sarah Cooper, Megan Ferguson, Ellen Tamaki, Mark Grossman, Sophia Bunnell and Hannah Cruz Distributor: Lionsgate
Grade: C+
There’s nothing wrong with attempting a lurid thriller of the sort that proliferated in the eighties and nineties, but Paul Feig’s adaptation of Freida McFadden’s 2022 bestseller seems less a homage than a parody of them. “The Housemaid” has twists aplenty (as well as some stomach-churning nastiness), but it’s all played so archly that it’s difficult not to giggle over the goings-on. Since Feig specializes in comedy, sometimes of a darker sort (see “A Simple Favor” and its inferior sequel), one suspects that’s the reaction he’s seeking, but by the close some might be too nauseated to go along. You have to be in the mood for some really over-the-top empowerment trash to enjoy this gonzo piece, but if you are, it should be your cup of sour tea.
The plot focuses on Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney), a frazzled young woman who applies for a housemaid’s position with the Winchesters, a wealthy couple on Long Island. She’s greeted enthusiastically by Nina (Amanda Seyfried), who shows her around the expensive house designed by her husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) and is impressed by her intelligence and impressive résumé. But it’s quickly revealed that the CV is a fraud: Millie’s an ex-con (the exact nature of her crime disclosed late in the story) whose parole requires her to find and hold onto a job, and at the moment she’s homeless and sleeping in her car.
She’s surprised when Nina calls to tell her she’s hired, and neither the warning of gloomy groundskeeper Enzo (Michele Morrone) nor the hostility of the couple’s adolescent daughter Cece (Indiana Elle) deters her from accepting the position. She’s even willing to endure the brusque disdain of Nina’s snooty mother-in-law Evelyn (Elizabeth Perkins), since Andrew is nice and accommodating. Millie is immediately ensconced in an attic room up a spiral staircase and a further long flight of stairs, one of those crannies with a triangular window high on the wall and virtually inaccessible.
But matters change when Nina suddenly turns into a screaming, demanding harpy, berating Millie for sloppiness and ineptitude; eventually she even works to get the girl into legal trouble—loaning her the family car, for example, and then reporting it stolen. Solicitous Andrew unfailingly smooths things over and develops a friendly concern for Millie. Other wives in the area confide to Millie that Nina is known to be psychologically unstable and has spent time in an institution after a particularly horrible episode; they see Andrew as a saint for tolerating her and taking such good care of a child that’s not biologically his.
One day when Nina’s away with Cece, Andrew suggests that he and Millie use a pair of non-refundable Broadway theatre tickets that Nina claims Millie had ordered for the wrong night. They drive to the city, see the show, enjoy dinner and, when Andrew decides it’s too late to drive back home, take rooms in a hotel. It’s not an uneventful night, to de decorous about what happens, and when Nina finds out and goes ballistic, Andrew must choose between the two women.
Where “The Housemaid” goes from this point won’t be revealed here; it’s practically impossible to say anything without spoilers. Suffice it to point out that violence that occurs on the page is less palatable when it’s shown on the screen, and that the ending, while faithful to the book, is predictably made much more florid and frantic.
This is the stuff of pulp, not high drama, and Feig knows the lowbrow-tone-in-tony-surroundings he’s going after and, with ample support from costumer Renée Ehrlich Kalfus, production designer Elizabeth Jones and cinematographer John Schwartzman, he nails it. Part of a viewer’s pleasure lies not so much in guessing the plot twists but in anticipating not how but when something planted early on is going to come back as part of the puzzle: Jones’s marvelous spiral staircase, for instance, is bound to dominate a set-piece, and does, and when Evelyn hands over her precious heritage china to Andrew’s care, you know it’s bound to get smashed somewhere down the line. The movie tries one’s patience when it goes over the two-hour line, but Brent White’s editing is good at creepy moodiness even in brightly-lit places, and Theodore Shapiro’s score adds to it.
The cast understand what’s expected of them too, and respond enthusiastically. Seyfried’s Nina is absolutely bonkers—or is she?—while Sweeney’s Millie is mousy and compliant—or is she scheming and hard-nosed? As for Sklenar, he just might remind you of Patrick Bergin, if you’ve ever seen that actor’s 1991 movie with Julia Roberts. Among the rest Morrone offers a penetrating monitory stare, Perkins is exquisitely glacial as Andrew’s haughty mother, and Elle is a convincingly surly kid.
“The Housemaid” isn’t much, but it scales the low bar it’s set for itself with slick expertise.