The Housemaid Review: Trite & Cheesy!

The best housemaids should always have good jeans. Fuck, fine, I’ll stop. What was I even expecting?! The Housemaid measures up to my perspective on every Paul Feig blunder. Trite, cheesy, and barren of inventiveness, it’s is an erotic psychological thriller without a shred of nuance, thrill, intrigue or shock in it’s entire story.

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Millie, played by Friday Beers favorite Sydney Sweeney, is a down-on-her-luck woman taking desperate measures to have a stable life. She looks to enigmatic housewife Nina (Amanda Seyfried) for work, but of course, NOT EVERYTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS!!! For most of the film, I was begging for it to just get to the freaking point. It leans into the erotic elements of Millie and Andrew’s (Brandon Sklenar) “subtle” connection with little reserve, and the personification of Nina goes a bit (way) too far into the extreme.

Now, with that said, Amanda Seyfried is not that bad in the film, at least with what she is given. I cannot say the same for Sweeney. In my Christy review, I mentioned the variety of acting quality in Sweeney’s roles, and this veers towards the “utterly terrible” end of her talents. I can’t put it any simpler as just saying that she is bad in every conceivable way. Brandon Sklenar, who plays Andrew, is hardly better. There is more demanded from his performance later in the film in which he just cannot deliver.

What I had hoped The Housemaid could be saved by are some shocking twists and revelations, but all the pieces were placed in plain sight on where this story would go. Freida McFadden’s 2022 novel does not seem to make the underlying mysteries of this plot pay off, as the editing and pacing removes any intended response. The lesser abilities of Paul Feig and his crew cannot carry the inner workings of this screenplay into film format, as so much is drowned out by lackluster filmmaking and awful pacing.

Overall, The Housemaid (2025) will trick people into thinking that this is a movie that it is not, as this is an existential dilemma that the director ponders himself. This movie doesn’t know what it wants to be: a shocking thriller? a tantalizing romance? campy comedy? or something more. I couldn’t figure it out either.

‘The Housemaid (2025)’ Rating – 1.5/5

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