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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u201cThe Housemaid\u201d has unofficially sold itself based on how crazy it gets in its second half. This is slightly less annoying than when movies sell themselves based on their twist endings \u2013 at least here, the twist gets a chance to breathe, and maybe there will be other twists after the initial shock \u2013 but it still creates the problem of forcing the audience to wait for something crazy to happen. As \u201cThe Housemaid\u201d went along in a direction that made sense, the movie felt long to me because I knew that the other shoe (or in this case, plate *shhh*) hadn\u2019t dropped yet, and the movie would have to spend time going in a different direction once it did. Of course, the twist then gave me a new set of issues with the film, but that\u2019s for later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I can tell you is that the movie opens with Millie (Sydney Sweeney) applying for a job as \u2013 what else? \u2013 a housemaid for socialite Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried). The job seems too good to be true, as Nina comes off as very nice, and apparently so are her finance whiz husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) and daughter Cece (Indiana Elle). More importantly, the live-in position provides much-needed steady employment and a fixed address for Millie, which she desperately needs as a condition of her parole (the parole itself is not a twist, but the circumstances behind it \u201cmight\u201d be). To Millie\u2019s delight, Nina apparently doesn\u2019t do her due diligence with a background check, and she\u2019s hired for the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It doesn’t take long for things to go south for Millie. Nina is much more demanding and belligerent than she seemed in the interview, and she threatens to fire Millie and ruin her life over tiny, if not completely made-up infractions. Cece is a cold, standoffish, unhappy child, lecturing Millie on which parts of life are a \u201cprivilege,\u201d a trait she shares with Andrew\u2019s even-more-miserable mother (Elizabeth Perkins). The family\u2019s handyman Enzo (Michele Morrone) is a creep in an ominous kind of way. And Andrew can be a creep in an \u201cunhappily married man with eyes for the young housemaid\u201d kind of way, though at least he\u2019s nice to Millie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a first half filled with soap opera drama and wealth porn (and some softcore regular porn), the movie delivers on the crazy as promised. At least one of the six characters I\u2019ve listed turns out to be an absolute psycho, and the movie basically turns from mystery into horror. It\u2019s really to a ridiculous degree, as in, \u201cHow can this person pass for a normal member of society when they\u2019re this deranged?\u201d But it makes for a memorable villainous turn, that\u2019s for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Housemaid\u201d is based on a book by Freida McFadden, and the movie is filled with moments that I can tell worked better on paper, if they ever worked at all. Characters\u2019 motivations are murky, even with – and sometimes especially with \u2013 hindsight. Maybe the book explained them better. The flashback-heavy timeline can make the movie seem tedious just when momentum is building. The tonal whiplash makes the movie hard to take seriously. And it does try to take itself seriously toward the end when at least one of the top-billed actresses tries to inspire legitimate feelings of female empowerment, which I saw as pandering and unearned. The movie is good at cat-and-mouse tension at points, with mind games played well even before it officially becomes a thriller, but it\u2019s not enough to save it. I have no idea if the novel version of \u201cThe Housemaid\u201d qualifies as \u201ctrash,\u201d but the movie version definitely plays like an adaptation of a trashy novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Housemaid\u201d is rated R for strong\/bloody violent content, sexual assault, sexual content, nudity, and language. Its running time is 131 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver \u201cThe Housemaid\u201d has unofficially sold itself based on how crazy it gets in its second half. This is slightly less annoying than when movies sell themselves… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"13","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNlwvMDFcL2ltYWdlLTIwMjYtMDEtMDVUMTczMDQ5LjQzMC1zY2FsZWQud2VicD9maXQ9NjgzJTJDMTAyNCZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6Ik1vdmllIFJldmlldyAmIzgyMTE7IFRoZSBIb3VzZW1haWQiLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJmb250IjoiIiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.WhpPtY6NxNMq4SJo6Y72Ix8OcJN34Y1aoKfuuoCKWNcMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":60658,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-2026-01-05T173049.430-scaled.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60659,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60657\/revisions\/60659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}