Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
To be able to afford a live-in housemaid is a privilege. And the Winchester family is all about privilege. Or at least it seems so… on the surface. So, when Millie, a young broke woman living in her car interviews gets a call back from Nina Winchester about landing the housemaid job, she is excited to have a roof over her head. But Nina soon turns into a boss from hell, and Millie struggles to ensure she doesn’t lose the job before she can get another back up.
Directed by Paul Feig, ‘The Housemaid’ is based on the bestselling book by Freida McFadden, with some tweaks by screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine. The 2 hour 11 minute thriller opens with a quick sequence of Sidney Sweeney’s Millie living out of her car, showering at rest stops, establishing her desperate situation. She puts on on fake glasses to appear more professional when she meets Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) for a full-time help job at her mansion, which includes babysitting her daughter Cece (Indiana Elle). BTW… the kid aptly looks like she’d belong in a haunted house or could play the vampire kid in Abigail.
Miraculously, Nina doesn’t run a background check on Millie before hiring her as the housemaid, otherwise she might have uncovered a dark and dubious past. But as it turns out, Millie should have done some homework on the volatile Nina herself, who begins to unravel in increasingly unsettling ways, making Millie question whether she should quickly find a backup plan. Until then, she endures Nina’s tantrums and mood swings, all while developing a growing crush on the handsome Andrew Winchester (Brandon Sklenar), who seems almost saintly for putting up with Nina.
Amanda Seyfried goes all in on Nina Winchester’s manic, entitled chaos, trashing the kitchen, hurling everything from the fridge onto the floor (yes, even glass bottles) over a set of missing “notes,” before promptly blaming Millie for it… on the poor girl’s second morning at work as their housemaid. Yes, expect lots of gaslighting in the film.
While Amanda gets the meatier, over-the-top, near-bipolar Nina, Sidney Sweeney’s portrayal of Millie is more tempered. Her character quietly puts up with Nina’s drama, doing her best to stay in her attic room, which weirdly locks only from the outside. And then Millie begins to grapple with a different mental battle – should she start an affair with her crazy boss’s dashing husband? The consequences of her eventual decision is terrifying twisty and the creators don’t hold back from turning things violent onscreen.
Brandon Sklenar cuts a handsome figure as Andrew Winchester, but the performance feels quite wooden in the first half. He’s more effective when he says less, and even with the film piling on kisses and steamy scenes, there’s barely any spark between him and either Seyfried or Sidney Sweeney.
I am usually complaining about movies being too long, but ‘The Housemaid’ probably needed another half hour to flesh out the tension between its primary protagonists, or probably should’ve been a mini-series. Much like the book, the climactic events of Millie’s horrid job saga throws unexpected twists, all of which is too conveniently resolved through some stroke of luck.
The climax deviates slightly from the book, delivering an interesting change, as it briefly keeps even readers on edge, wondering just how far the film might stray. I always like it when thrillers tweak their endings just enough to keep familiar audiences guessing. That said, the new twist is just as convenient as it was on the page. So, is the book better than the film? Definitely yes. But despite its flaws, this live-action adaptation still makes for an entertaining one-time watch.
Watch ‘The Housemaid’ on Prime Video.
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