★★★ (3 out of 4)
My love for trashy movies just hit a new high in low after watching “The Housemaid,” a thriller that does everything you could wish for in terms of twisty, twisted fun. Kill the Oscar campaigns for Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney for this one—they have “The Testament of Ann Lee” and “Christy” for that. “The Housemaid” is too deliciously depraved for stuffy awards. Seyfried and Sweeney are having the blast of their lives, so the only thing to do is join in.
“The Housemaid” is based on the massive bestseller by Freida McFadden who knows how to stick it to the idle rich just while they’re enjoying their most annoying privileges. No one can humble brag like Seyfried, wearing luxury creamy knits as she interviews poor Millie Calloway (Sweeney) who’s applying for the job of live-in housemaid. Don’t worry, there’s a bolt on Millie’s attic door. But it’s on the outside, so there’s that.
'The Housemaid' is bonkers to the max. And I mean that in the best way.
In the role of Long Island trophy wife Nina Winchester, Seyfried looks like she caught a whiff of poverty—discount perfume, perhaps—while she shows Millie around the gated mansion she occupies with her husband, Andrew, played by Brandon Sklenar like a shellshocked actor who’s still not recovered from refereeing Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni on the set of “It Ends with Us.”
“The Housemaid” has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “strong bloody violence, gore, language, sexuality/nudity and drug use”—all the things we go to the movies for. So be patient, the good stuff is coming, directed by Paul Feig (“Bridesmaids,” “A Simple Favor”), a master of lighthearted torture porn.
And not so fast letting Millie off the hook. She’s wearing those glasses for show, to take the threat out of her smile. Sweeney knows how to play the humble act without taking it too far. She’s just waiting for the right moment to attack and trust me it’s coming.
Seyfried goes nutso almost immediately, throwing shade that grows into throwing temper tantrums and dishes and food or whatever’s handy, expecting Millie to clean up every mess, which she does with a look that rivals Rose Byrne’s in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” Andrew sympathizes, perhaps too much, as he and Millie duck into corners to talk, in their pjs. Oh my.
When Andrew is out, doing whatever he does in “tech,” Nina and Millie are alone exchanging looks like daggers. Oh, there is Nina’s daughter Cece, played by Indiana Elle. And Elizabeth Perkins pops in as Andrew’s snob mom with death stares that put Millie in her line of fire.
But suddenly all at once, as Tennessee Williams wrote, “there’s God.” Or at least there’s a screenwriter, Rebecca Sonnenshine, who remembers to go back to the book and turn the tables on everyone, including the audience, who’ll never see what’s coming. And that’s delightful, all of it. A topsy-turvy home with characters who are out to kill-kill-kill is a big improvement over watching all that good-cheer holiday swill on the Hallmark Channel.
Early on, it’s revealed that both ladies have done time, Millie in prison and Nina in a psych ward, but Feig and his actress divas are just getting started. “The Housemaid” is bonkers to the max. And I mean that in the best way. Watching Seyfried and Sweeney play “can you top this for crazy” turns out to be the holiday gift we didn’t know we needed. Now we do.