Adapted from Freida McFadden’s BookTok sensation and starring two of Hollywood’s most in-demand blonde actresses in Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried (both of whom also appear in year’s end, would-be awards contenders), The Housemaid is a twist-filled, nasty bit of business that should be the stuff of irresistible pulp. A nesting doll of salacious details, ulterior agendas, and enough melodramatic revelations to power a dozen “women’s pictures,” there’s a real go-for-broke quality to material this unapologetically trashy. Here we have a desperate young housekeeper (Sweeney) who maneuvers her way into a world of wealth and privilege only to be pitted against an equally desperate slightly older housewife (Seyfried) who’s not at all what she seems, all while also finding herself embroiled in head games and extramarital sex with the beefy head of the household, a disarmingly perfect tech bro (Brandon Sklenar). But subject matter this lurid — encompassing domestic abuse, self-harm, mental illness, sexual assault, and violent revenge by proxy — requires a deft directorial hand; someone capable of juggling conflicting tones and mordant humor without the entire thing collapsing into camp. It likely requires a dispassionate technician like David Fincher to play the absurdity of it all bone dry, or, even better, an impish provocateur like peak Paul Verhoeven who would emphasize the tactical nature of seduction and inherent hollowness of affluence. Instead, what we get is a film from Paul Feig, the inoffensive director of 2016’s Ghostbusters and dozens of hours of sitcoms.
In contrast to most of his studio-director peers, Feig overwhelmingly makes films with female leads (his biggest hits are Bridesmaids and The Heat), and perhaps the tonal wishy-washiness is his innate protectiveness for actresses coming out. It’s just as likely, however, that this is a filmmaker who exclusively makes broad comedies and, when confronted with material that strays this far outside of an artist’s comfort zone, old habits die hard. That would explain what a lumpy, undercooked souffle of a film The Housemaid is, which, for the majority of its runtime, carries itself like a comedy — only one where nobody bothered to write any jokes. It’s a film where conflicts built on innocent misunderstandings explode into the screaming olympics, where half the cast has seemingly been directed to give “fierce” line readings, and where protracted love scenes are staged like jiggly homages to late-night premium cable. Everything is presented with a cowardly wink to the audience or is accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek needle drop (Kelly Clarkson!) while the subject matter becomes increasingly ominous (forced institutionalization, gaslighting, small children in peril, involuntary confinement). It’s disorienting to say the least, and not in a manner that serves the film especially well; all indications are that this began its life as a steamy modern noir or psychological thriller, and then took several wrong turns.
Sweeney stars as Millie, a mousy young woman with a past, living out of her car and lying through her teeth in a job interview to become the Winchesters’ new live-in housemaid. We immediately know Millie isn’t on the up and up because she only puts on a pair of thick eyeglasses after she finishes driving to the family’s palatial, Great Neck home. Millie is warmly greeted by Nina (Seyfried), a Type A perfectionist with an unhinged smile who exclusively wears the color cream. Gushing over Millie’s (fabricated) resume, Nina all but offers Millie the job on the spot, but not before taking her on a tour of the mansion personally designed by Nina’s carved-from-oak husband, multi-millionaire scion Andrew (Sklenar, playing a character who embodies many of Elon Musk’s creepier qualities while also being a total softie who looks like he spends 20 hours a day in the gym). Within days Millie has moved into the small but quaint servant’s quarters in the attic — the room is dead-bolted from the outside, but best not to dwell too much on that — and is busy cooking family meals straight out of Better Homes & Gardens (so many quiches) and enduring the scowls of Millie’s disapproving young daughter, Cecilia (Indiana Elle), all while fantasizing every night about being ravaged by Andrew. Sure, Nina immediately turns on her and appears to be living through a series of manic episodes that finds her tearing the house apart, but life could be worse. Millie’s got a bed to sleep in, is given a brand new iPhone and access to the family credit card, and she’s got a job which is important for keeping her parole officer off her back.
Yes, Millie’s shameful secret is that she just got out of prison for doing a 10-year bid for manslaughter, which makes quitting her new job once Nina goes full mean girl on her (something Seyfried has some experience with) an impossibility. It becomes apparent that Nina is trying to sabotage Millie, setting her up to fail and humiliating her at every turn. She even goes so far as filing a false police report claiming that Millie stole her car after insisting that she borrow it to run errands. But then there’s Andrew, who in addition to being handsome, wealthy, and an affable enough hang — albeit a little basic in his film takes if he still thinks Barry Lyndon is underappreciated — also stands up for Millie whenever Nina goes too far. Plus, he makes bedroom eyes at Millie whenever they’re together, which is the sort of thing typically frowned upon in an employer-employee relationship, but happens all the time in tawdry romance novels and the films made from same. After a weekend alone in the city while Nina is out of town with Cecilia, Millie and Andrew fall into bed with one another (repeatedly). More than a one-time fling, Andrew has designs on the younger and bouncier Millie replacing Nina as his wife, possibly serving as a means to providing him a “soccer team’s worth” of children. So when Nina uncovers the affair, it’s she, not Millie, who’s sent packing.
At this point it starts to become self-defeating to reveal much more of the plot — indeed, the film’s publicity machine urges early viewers not to give too much away — but needless to say that all of that boots-knocking with Andrew eventually gives way to some troubling tendencies on his part (he becomes awfully fond of the terms “consequences” and “privilege,” wielding both like weapons). Meanwhile, Nina’s motives are revealed to be a good deal more complicated than we’re initially led to believe, if not exactly psychologically credible or coherent. Having backed itself into a corner of incongruous behavior and irreconcilable dangling plot threads, The Housemaid effectively hits reset by flashing back to years earlier and spending a good chunk of its second act explaining what’s really been going on all this time via an unmotivated shift in perspective and incorporating copious amounts of internal narration. It’s the sort of thing that’s often the stuff of page-turners in fiction, but in The Housemaid it’s not only an ungainly solution to adaptation, but simply reinforces how much more adroitly a film like Gone Girl pulled off a similar trick. Still, that’s preferable to the film’s primary expository device: having every person that Sweeney’s character interacts with immediately unburden themselves of years worth of inflammatory family histories and embarrassing Winchester gossip 30 seconds after she meets them.
Having spent most of the past year making a concerted effort to de-glam herself in films like Christy and Eden in a quixotic effort to prove her acting bona fides, Sweeney is squarely back in sexpot territory with The Housemaid. The famously buxom actress is outfitted in a series of push-up tops and form-fitting outfits — or sneaks around the house in the middle of the night in just an undershirt and boyshorts — with the character oblivious to how her appearance might be received by the already on-edge woman of the house. It’s a nonsensical role made up of contradictory traits and genre tropes: an apple-cheeked hard-luck case who claims she hasn’t had sex in a decade, utterly unaware of the effect she has on men, without guile (beyond lying out of necessity)… who also flies into a homicidal rage at the mere sight of another woman in peril. The actress has often had a better sense of her gifts than she’s given credit for, and The Housemaid leans upon Sweeney’s physicality and ability to demonstrate somatic anguish on screen, particularly once the film begins to dabble in body horror (the actress spends most of the film’s final act with her own blood defiantly smeared across her forehead as though it were warpaint). However, the performance is likely to be best remembered for the way the actress is slung around, whisked up into the air and unwrapped like a Christmas present by Sklenar during the film’s numerous cheesy love scenes.
Demonstrating a stronger feel for the pungent tonal collision Feig is going for, and certainly putting the work in, is Seyfried, who in any given scene is asked to play Nina as a perfectly coiffed PTA mom, fugue state violent psychopath, frazzled college student and single mom, or an emancipated woman getting drunk on liberation (and spirits) with zero fucks left to give. It’s near impossible to track where the character’s head is as the film progresses or how much of the character’s actions are even premeditated, but let it not be said the actress isn’t sweating for the film (Seyfried arguably throws herself about here with more reckless abandon than she does as the titular founder of the Shakers in The Testament of Ann Lee). But it’s all of a piece with how The Housemaid simply tosses anything and everything at the wall in the hopes that enough might stick so the film may endure as an object of kitsch; the centerpiece of future wine-fueled, rowdy screenings. The Housemaid is never dull, but then neither is a flaming car on the side of the road. And there’s a similar, morbid, gawking quality to observing this collection of artists valiantly trying to resuscitate the erotic thriller while also making sure the audience knows everyone involved had a great time making the film.
DIRECTOR: Paul Feig; CAST: Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Michele Morrone; DISTRIBUTOR: Lionsgate; IN THEATERS: December 19; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 11 min.
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