Sydney Sweeney in ‘The Housemaid’
Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney) was dead broke and had just been living in her car for some time. One day, she was unexpectedly hired by Mrs. Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) to be the live-in maid for their elegant Long Island mansion. When she moved in and was warmly welcomed by Nina and her kind husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), Millie thought her days of miserable existence have finally come to an end. Or so she thought.
This convoluted psychological thriller film was directed by Paul Feig from a screenplay written by Rebecca Sonnenshine, adapted from the 2022 novel by Freida McFadden. Feig is known for comedies prominently featuring female characters, like "Bridesmaids" (2011), "The Heat" (2013), or "Ghostbusters" (2016). Despite the ominous plot brewing between its two lead female characters, Feig still managed to inject his new film with a darkly comic tone.
The first act seemed so straightforward, with three beautiful people sharing one big house, you would logically predict that something sexy and scandalous was afoot.
Suddenly, everything turned around one way in the second act, with psychological breakdowns, false accusations. Expository flashbacks to set things straight, but just when you thought you had the story all figured out, the outrageous story twisted yet another way before the end.
Both Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried played deeply flawed characters, but the actresses played them well enough for audiences to sympathize with them. Sweeney was the obvious underdog, but she was certainly no saint. At first, Seyfried had the more sinister role with all the manipulation and gaslighting Nina was doing. Despite this, she was still able to draw us to her side despite all that, and that is no mean feat.
The most interesting character in the whole story was actually the guy caught in between the two squabbling ladies — Andrew. From a casual boy-next-door type photographer in his last film "Drop" (2025), Sklenar had transformed himself this time into a privileged millionaire Casanova with a killer smile and magnetic charisma that was absolutely irresistible to all women, including his mother Evelyn (Elizabeth Perkins).
This review was originally published in the author's blog, “Fred Said.”