“Having teeth is a privilege.”
It feels as if the last few years have brought fewer and fewer movies for adults to movie theaters, with most studios holding those movies back, figuring that the blockbusters are getting all the traction at the multiplex and awards contenders are clogging up the arthouse. So, if you don’t want to see the latest adventures of Avatar, Spongebob, Wicked, Freddy, or Zootopia, and can only handle so many depressing awards season films a week, you’re basically S.O.L.
Thankfully there is one other option in 2025, The Housemaid, a sleazy thriller the likes of which used to get released regularly in the 90s. It feels anachronistic here at the end of the year, but it certainly has the potential to play as effective counter-programming to the family films on offer from Hollywood. It’s not a good film, but it’s also not a sequel, prequel, reboot, reimagining, or reconceptualization of an existing film. What I’m saying here is that, if you’re reading this, you likely have certain expectations from a film, and The Housemaid is going to need you to bring those expectations way down.
Millie (Sydney Sweeney) is a down on her luck woman just looking for a break and a job to get back on her feet. Thankfully, the wealthy Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) is in need of a new live-in housemaid to take care of various tasks, including taking care of their daughter. What seems like a dream job, however, quickly proves to be anything but, with Nina’s fragile mental state making every day extra difficult for Millie. And Nina’s husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), while seemingly nice, is fairly oblivious to his wife’s many problems.
As for Millie, she’s basically found herself trapped in this job due to some dark secrets from her past. Uncertain of what Nina does and does not know about her past, Millie must walk a tightrope, but her secrets pale in comparison with whatever nefarious stuff is going on with the Winchester family, particularly Andrew’s doting mother Evelyn (Elizabeth Perkins).
First and foremost, The Housemaid is a film with a decent handle on its tone, though I worry the more absurdist comedy will fly over the heads of most audience members. Director Paul Feig and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine are definitely going for a campy tone, and it mostly works, even as the plot reveals and machinations get increasingly ridiculous in the third act. If it’s not wholly successful as a piece of camp, however, that falls squarely at the feet of the film’s supremely out of her depth star.
Guys, what can I say about Sydney Sweeney? My day job has obviously kept me abreast of the many developments in her career, but I hadn’t really sat down and watched her act in anything before now. As an actress, she appears to have just one gear, one reaction face for everything, one mode, one emotion, as if she is peak Gen-Z brain-rot apathy come to life, giving both everything and nothing simultaneously.
I don’t have to spend a moment of my time wondering what her appeal is to anyone attracted to women, but to everyone else, I have to ask… you agree with me on this, right? Look, she can always prove me wrong, and I love being proven wrong about young stars. Everyone has to start somewhere and everyone has room to grow as an actor, but my goodness… there’s just nothing going on behind her eyes at any point in this film.
Thank goodness for Amanda Seyfried, who has a SOLID handle on the movie she’s in and that movie’s tone. She’s starring in the movie I want to see and the movie I think Paul Feig wants to make, and it’s a glorious pairing. Though they share only two scenes, when Seyfried and Perkins are on screen together, the movie’s got all the campy juice one could hope for in a project this side of Ryan Murphy’s hack brand of camp.
I’ll say this for Paul Feig, he’s managed to carve out a lane for himself in a world where the words “comedy” and “theatrical release” don’t come together often enough. The Heat and Spy both proved he had the chops to expand beyond the straight comedy world of Bridesmaids, and he has segued nicely into cheeky highbrow thrillers aimed squarely at the same female audience he once courted with his comedies. He could certainly be making better movies, but the kinds of movies he once excelled at just don’t exist in this day and age.
I’m glad I got to see this in a packed house that was roughly 90% female and enjoy their gasping and hollering and screaming. It gave me a solid reminder that the theatrical experience can’t live or die on superheroes and animated sequels. The Housemaid will play equally campy at home, and those who derive pleasure—no matter how guilty or not it may be—from that brand of movie will enjoy it for what it is. But seeing it in a theater is really the best way to see this kind of movie and I’m glad that Paul Feig is still making movies for movie theaters. Whether or not they’re for grown-ups is almost peripheral at this point.
Header image via IMDb