The Housemaid seems like the type of film an algorithm would create—something to have on in the background while you clean the house.
We are back in the golden years of the trashy erotic thrillers of the 1990’s with comedy veteran Paul Feig’s take on Freida McFadden’s novel of the same name, The Housemaid. A film that tries to evoke the themes and exaggerated fun of classics like Basic Instinct or Single White Female, but doesn’t achieve the necessary bite or reticent performances to succeed.
We open on Sydney Sweeney’s Milly Calloway, a young woman desperate for money and living out of her car. The film’s intentions are firmly set by a clunky voiceover from Millie herself, which returns at various points to spoon-feed the film’s subtler points. We learn of her stint in prison and that she needs to hold down a job to meet probation guidelines – enter the mega-wealthy Nina Winchester (Amanda Seifried), a picturesque housewife in need of a live-in housemaid. The mansion is beautiful, and Nina seems nice; it’s all sunshine and rainbows, despite the town’s bitchy mums’ obvious requisite of a frequent rumour mill detailing her madness. It’s all too good to be true, and Milly is stunned when she’s offered the job, but not all is as it seems, thus beginning a dark descent into a larger truth that puts her in grave danger.
You’d imagine from the setup that The Housemaid would grab the baton and deliver shocking, jolting thrills, but it more than takes its time. We are often treated to scenes of Nina freaking out over either something in her head or a minor inconvenience. Amanda Seyfried is decent as Nina and does a great job at being awkwardly cutting and rude, though when she goes gonzo, the theatrics are on the nose and silly.
Meanwhile, Sydney Sweeney is lifeless and dull as Milly. The now-controversial star seems relegated to one-dimensional roles in commercial projects, adding nothing new or exciting to an already uninteresting character. But the worst of the lot is Brandon Sklenar as Nina’s husband, Andrew, who takes Milly under his wing with his incessant charm offensive and constant wardrobe choice of tight white vests around the house. He is so wooden that it is as if someone wrote “handsome man who is husband of protagonist and also love interest” into ChatGPT to create his character, and he reused the prompt for performance notes. You need these characters to revel in the B-movie gloss, but it’s all played way too seriously, so you can see the plot and character twists coming a mile off.
Paul Feig always seems like a very sincere and genuine guy in interviews. Suited and booted and earnest, he knows what he’s doing and has made some genuinely great comedies. However, his handle on eroticism seems to share some DNA with his prim and proper appearance. The sex scenes, arguably some of the most important to establish the tone, are laughably gratuitous and straightforward. Not only are they strangely lit, but the camerawork is all off; he lingers far too long on certain shots and blasts terrible pop music over every scene. There’s a strange stretch of constant sex without any danger or desire in sight; it’s like soft porn mixed with a Disney Channel original movie.
When the last half an hour finally decides to deliver on its promise of chaos, it’s been preluded by an exposition-laden flashback so turgid and long that any momentum is evaporated. Things get bloody and mildly sadistic, but it’s too late to shock because we’ve had to sit through so much setup and filler. The film attempts to comment on cycles of abuse and how women are patriarchally pitted against each other. Feig seems to have genuine intentions when telling female-led stories, but the conventional archetypes and underwhelming performances dull any cutting truths and come across as reductive first-wave feminism. The film seems to shout, “girl power!” at you whilst nodding its head, enticing you to agree. However, we are long past The Spice Girls and the 1990s, and the audience should expect more.
The Housemaid seems like the type of film an algorithm would create—something to have on in the background while you clean the house.
The Housemaid is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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