Movie Review – The Housemaid

This movie is… something. And there is no way to review it honestly without spoiling the third act so if you are like me and you haven’t read the book, you might want to stop reading now. If you aren’t like me and you don’t mind knowing about a revealing third act, then by all means stay and follow along.

Sydney Sweeney plays Millie, a woman desperate for a job and a place to live. She lives in her car and her parole dictates that she be employed and housed otherwise she has to go back to prison to serve out the last five years of her sentence. She happens upon Nina Winchester’s (Amanda Seyfried) need for a live in housemaid. It’s immediately clear that both of these women are putting up a front and have a lot to hide. After Millie moves in, the husband Andrew (Brendon Sklenar) is less than enthused but he eventually warms up to Millie. A little too much in fact, even as Nina descends into paranoid psychosis. After Nina sets Millie up and tries to have her arrested, Andrew steps in and kicks Nina out of the house. It isn’t until Millie accidentally breaks the family heirloom china that she realizes something is amiss with Andrew.

In a very Gone Girl turn of events, the film suddenly shifts from Millie’s perspective to Nina’s and the viewer finds out that Nina is not psychotic. In fact, Andrew has gaslit everyone in their lives into believing that she is even as he locks her in the attic and has her put in a mental institution twice after framing her for trying to kill their then toddler daughter. She only stays in the marriage for the sake of her daughter who she had before she met Andrew. Nina knows getting custody will be impossible.

When the film shifts back to Millie, we find out that her prison sentence was for murdering her boarding school roommate’s rapist. The roommate refused to admit to being raped, so Millie was forced into pleading guilty to a manslaughter charge. Nina had brought her into her home knowing she could survive Andrew, even as Andrew locks Millie in the attic much in the same way he did to Nina.

This whirlwind change of events isn’t done poorly, but since we have seen similar unreliable narrator gaslighting in other films (Gone Girl, as I mentioned), it really needed to be done well for it to work. Unfortunately, the film tries and fails to set up a creepy grounds keeper who is really Nina’s friend. There must be plot points from the book that are missing here because the inclusion of this character seems like an afterthought as it includes him as Nina’s way of getting free of Andrew even though most of the film ignores him.

Andrew’s charm is certainly something I fell for a little during this film – Sklenar’s performance is certainly one of the highlights here even when he goes from sexy, charming husband to emotionally abusive asshole. The clues are there, though. Millie finds one of Nina’s anti-psychosis pills in the toilet so its obvious Nina isn’t taking them. Millie’s bedroom door in the attic has marks on it where Nina once tried to escape and both locks are on the outside of the door. Even Nina’s comment at the beginning of the film about how she thinks she might die falling down the spiral staircase is a huge red flag. Her mental illness isn’t psychosis, its fear. Millie barely bats an eye at any of it. Millie’s fear of going back to jail might cause her to turn a blind eye, but is Andrew really so charming that she overlooks all of this so quickly? Maybe. I mean, he certainly is nice to look at.

It’s the daughter, Cece, that is keeping me from liking this film more. She seems to love her father more than her mother, and Nina’s monologue over her backstory montage tells a tale of how Andrew gaslit Cece as well as her mother. But, when Nina finally gets Cece away from the house, the girl seems perfectly fine with her mother as if her father wasn’t her favorite parent. Millie couldn’t seem to make any headway with her either. This kid would have seemed like the perfect way for Millie to find out who the parents really are, but Cece just seems to distrust her. Like the grounds keeper, she seems like a character who was only there when needed to further the plot between Amanda Seyfried’s psychotic character’s breakdowns and the steamy scenes between Sweeney and Sklenar. A ten year old afterthought who really sucks at ballet.

This film is watchable because Seyfried, Sklenar, and a grey haired Elizabeth Perkins as Andrew’s controlling mother all put in great performances. They carry the film. Sydney Sweeney gives the film a dead in the eyes performance. Perhaps her character feels dead inside after what she’s been through, which would explain the dead look in her eyes. But I’m not buying it. I think this is what Sydney Sweeney has to offer up as acting. Mildly convincing, but only if she gets to be sexy in barely there clothes in the process. This could have been the sexiest film of the year while also adding commentary about how perception distorts how we view people and how easy it is to gaslight people into believing a false narrative. It almost gets there but stays too long on Sydney Sweeney to be effective. The most positive thing this does is make me want to read the book, which is never a bad thing.

3 out of 5 stars for this mildly sexy thriller from Paul Feig.