Wait, ‘The Housemaid’ Is Almost A Properly Good Thriller?
Maybe it was my staggeringly low expectations or the seemingly endless controversies that haunted one of its lead actresses throughout 2025, but I was genuinely surprised at how much I kind of enjoyed The Housemaid.
It was a reluctant sense of enjoyment at first: throwing my head back and cackling as one insane thing after another happened while Amanda Seyfried completely acts circles around Sydney Sweeney. But soon I came to the horrifying realisation that I was perhaps unironically enjoying The Housemaid, and with a few changes I think I might have even ventured to call it great.
Millie (Sweeney) is struggling to find her feet after leaving prison on parole, sleeping in her car between job interviews and printing off lie-filled resumes. But when she finally gets hired as a housemaid for the Winchester family by matriarch Nina (Seyfried), it seems like things are looking up for her.
Except, it seems that Nina has some problems. Though her husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) seems to have the patience of an angel, Nina seems constantly on the verge of breakdown and begins accusing Millie of all sorts of things. Meanwhile, Millie and Andrew seem to be getting closer, understanding one another… what will Nina think when she finds out?
At least, that’s the first part of The Housemaid. Based on Freida McFadden’s thriller novel of the same name, there’s no prizes for guessing that Paul Feig’s movie has a little bit more going on under the hood than a love triangle. Still, I was surprised by how engaged I was by this part of the film before the penny dropped, thanks in large part due to a genuinely great performance by the impeccable Amanda Seyfried.
Amanda Seyfried goes way too hard in The Housemaid
Seyfried seems to fully understand the kind of movie she’s in: a twisty thriller film in the vein of Red Eye that serves as both pulpy genre fare and a chance for actors to strut their stuff. And strut it she does: Seyfried is able to encapsulate the totality of Nina as a character, suffusing a surprising amount of depth into the character throughout the runtime.
Similarly good is Brandon Sklenar as Andrew, who continues to refine the kind of chiseled-chin charm he brought to last year’s Drop while fully understanding what the script asks of him; something I certainly cannot say about Sydney Sweeney in The Housemaid.
Putting aside her… strange activities throughout 2025, Sweeney also just doesn’t have the sauce in the same way as her co-stars. I have enjoyed her work before, but she never seems to have as much charisma or presence as her co-stars – human ball of charisma Glen Powell puts her to shame in Anyone But You, for example.
Outside of a few key moments, Sweeney seems to be taking the material far too seriously. I hesitate to call it improper direction, considering everyone else is substantially more tuned into the film’s wavelength than she is. Many of The Housemaid’s other issues also feel linked to this one – the film is too long, but would it feel snappier if a more charismatic lead took Sweeney’s place?
It’s impossible to know, of course, but it speaks to the surprising strengths of everything else in The Housemaid that it doesn’t detract from the overall experience too much, making Feig’s film genuinely fun and twisty in a way that evokes a certain kind of film from the early 21st century – enough for me to have a fairly good time with what I admittedly thought would be a stinker.
★★★
