The Housemaid

In the first scene of the film, we follow Millie, a 27-year-old woman, as she drives her car straight towards a beautiful mansion in the suburbs of New York. She has come for an interview for a job as a housekeeper. For Millie, this job is a second chance after a bad start in life, since she ended up behind bars after committing a serious crime and is currently on parole. She immediately hits it off with Nina Winchester, her potential employer, who, after asking a few questions, gives her hope.

A few days later, Millie is surprised and deeply relieved to receive a favorable call. She will finally be able to leave the vehicle she has been living in and move into a splendid house. Nina gives her a very warm welcome and introduces her to her husband Andrew and their ten-year-old daughter Cecelia. Despite her youth, Millie is experienced, nothing scares her, and she is ready to do anything to keep this job.

However, very quickly, the day after her arrival, Nina changes her tone and greets her with hysterical screams, accusing her of misplacing and throwing away sheets of paper containing an important speech she has to give at work. Her husband tries to calm her down, but to no avail. The atmosphere is very tense. Millie doesn't understand; she hasn't touched anything. Everything seemed clear and straightforward with this family, and there was no reason to expect such unfair behavior. The viewer, as surprised as Millie's character, begins to glimpse that the relationship is not as cordial as it seems, that something strange and mysterious is hidden within the walls of this wealthy family's home, and our attention is on high alert. What could be so dramatic about this family?

The following scenes are just as chaotic. Nina, who is alternately full of energy, cheerful, and kind, can suddenly become angry, mean, and uncompromising towards her housekeeper. Above all, we wonder how Andrew, who is calm, kind, and compassionate towards his wife, can endure this stressful situation for so long without complaining. A character who is both charming and enigmatic, what place does he occupy within his fragile home?

The director manages to instill doubt and anxiety in us. We feel uncomfortable watching Millie being constantly rebuffed; she is like prey caught in a spider's web. Numerous red herrings and revelations maintain a steady pace, and a terrible game seems to be playing out between the protagonists. No one can glimpse the truth, so complex is human nature. A few violent scenes underpin the film but appear necessary for greater realism and credibility. The tension is always at its peak, taking us from one emotion to another. We constantly ask ourselves questions about what might happen next, finding it difficult to imagine what will follow.

The gamble has paid off: this film adaptation of Freida McFadden's book is remarkable, with breathtaking suspense and a thrilling plot full of surprises and twists and turns. Fans of suspense will be satisfied right up to the final scene. The actors' performances are on par with this relentless thriller. As the story unfolds, we discover hidden facets and manipulations, and appearances are often deceiving. The film is the right length, not too long, and takes us through terrible, trying, and above all unexpected moments. An excellent crime film that leaves a lasting impression.

The Housemaid
Directed by Paul Feig
Written by Rebecca Sonnenshine
Based on The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
Produced by Todd Lieberman, Laura Fischer, Paul Feig
Starring Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Michele Morrone, Elizabeth Perkins
Cinematography: John Schwartzman
Music by Theodore Shapiro
Production companies: Feigco Entertainment, Hidden Pictures
Distributed by Lionsgate (United States), Metropolitan FilmExport (France)
Release date: December 19, 2025 (United States), December 24, 2025 (France)
Running time: 131 minutes

Seen on November 18, 2025 at the Metropolitan Theater

Cookie's Mark:

With The Housemaid, director Paul Feig returns to the glamorous, feminist thriller he explored in A Simple Favor, but this time he goes even further into the film noir genre. Based on Freida McFadden's best-selling novel, the film plunges us into the sumptuous Long Island mansion of Nina and Andrew Winchester, a house so immaculate that it seems to have been designed solely to be destroyed later. It is into this trap that Sydney Sweeney falls in the role of Millie Calloway, a former prisoner recently released on parole, desperate enough to falsify her resume and accept a room in the attic with a door that locks from the outside. On paper, it sounds like a pulp novel, but on screen, it becomes an elegant, over-the-top gothic thriller where gaslighting, class resentment, erotic fantasies, and revenge collide in a marble kitchen. When another warning sign flashes neon, the heroine walks right past it without stopping.

The film works as a duel of glances and power plays between Nina Winchester, played by Amanda Seyfried, and Millie Calloway, played by Sydney Sweeney. Rebecca Sonnenshine's adaptation cleverly draws on the imbalance of class and status: Millie arrives with nothing but her parole conditions and her shame, while Nina floats through an existence of cream, cashmere, and luxurious, discreet neurosis. Paul Feig films the Winchester house as a designer dollhouse that gradually becomes haunted by its own secrets: the spiral staircase that invites a fall, the attic room with scratches on the door, the perfectly set dining table just waiting to be destroyed. At first, the film unfolds like a loop of psychological torture: Nina showers Millie with effusive compliments one moment, then demolishes the kitchen and accuses her of sabotaging the PTA notes the next. The rhythm of these outbursts may seem repetitive, but they also function as a twisted conditioning experiment—on Millie and on the audience, who gradually come to understand that this house runs on cruelty and fear disguised as civility.

The Housemaid is almost indecently generous. Amanda Seyfried embodies Nina with a freedom she rarely has the opportunity to express: she moves around the house like a Real Housewife of Great Neck, then explodes without warning, her eyes shifting from gentle concern to M3GAN-like glassy terror in a single shot. There's a running joke that everyone in town treats Andrew like a saint for putting up with her, and Amanda Seyfried plays Nina as a woman who is both aware of and trapped by that narrative. She is monstrous, to be sure, but behind her tantrums lies a wounded intelligence, and the film is at its peak when we don't know if she's having a psychotic episode, pulling off a long con, or both. Sydney Sweeney, on the other hand, starts out deliberately low-key: Millie has hunched shoulders, half-spoken lines, and a theatrical humility, the kind of woman who knows she can't afford to react. Some viewers might mistake this initial passivity for flatness, but it pays off when the script finally allows Millie to drop her act and bare her teeth. In the second half, Sydney Sweeney transforms from a traumatized employee into something far more dangerous, matching Amanda Seyfried's madness blow for blow and turning what began as a victim narrative arc into a thorny, audience-pleasing power grab.

Around them, Andrew Winchester, played by Brandon Sklenar, is the perfect 90s domestic thriller hero: a techie with the physique of a former linebacker, the soul of a romance novel cover model, and just enough ambiguity to make you uncomfortable. He is tender with Nina, protective of Millie, constantly praised by the harpies of the parents' association, and a little too invested in everyone's hairstyle and appearance; this obsession with appearances becomes one of the film's recurring gags and a discreet warning that his image as the perfect husband is in itself a kind of performance. Indiana She gives Cecelia Winchester a cold and watchful presence that fits perfectly into this house with its manicured facades, while Elizabeth Perkins appears as Andrew's mother and, with a single icy glance, conveys the moral decay of this wealthy world. Even Michele Morrone, in the role of the sullen gardener Enzo, seems to be a deliberate nod to the Gothic tradition: this dark figure on the periphery who could be a threat, a witness, or both. These supporting roles don't have the same psychological depth as the main roles, but they thicken the atmosphere and help make the story's most scandalous twists and turns more believable.

Stylistically, The Housemaid is the work of Paul Feig, who gives free rein to his trashy side. His experience in comedy shines through in the timing of the looks, the way the camera lingers a little too long on a meaningful gesture, the mischievous nods to the audience that say, yes, we all know what kind of movie this is. At times, we wish he would go even further—the first hour sometimes flirts with pure camp before returning to a more classic melodrama—but when the film finally lets loose in the last third, it's a joyful dive. Rebecca Sonnenshine's screenplay, based on Freida McFadden's twist-filled novel, distills the story like a malicious dealer, piling up secrets until the inevitable twist turns everything we thought we knew about Millie and Nina upside down. Purists might point out that some of the twists strain plausibility, and that the film's 130-odd minutes seem weighed down by a few too many cycles of abuse and apology, but once the film shifts from psychological drama to full-throttle operatic madness, the earlier excesses begin to appear as the foundations of the final catharsis.

What gives The Housemaid a little more bite than the label of disposable trash entertainment suggests is the way it tackles issues of gender and class through spectacle. The film understands the precariousness of women living at the mercy of systems written by men, whether it's a parole board, a multimillionaire husband, or a suburban social circle that pathologizes any woman who refuses to conform. Millie's desperation to keep her job and a roof over her head pushes her to tolerate abuse that would send a freer person running; Nina's entire identity rests on her role as the perfect wife, mother, and hostess, while being quietly punished every time she breaks that facade. Even amid the bloody twists and turns, you sense that Paul Feig and Rebecca Sonnenshine are giving the audience a nod to what women are expected to swallow in order to survive in gilded cages like this one. This combination—legitimate anger wrapped in silk and served with martinis—is very much this director's forte, and fans of his previous thrillers will recognize the pleasure he takes in letting his heroines weaponize the very roles that are supposed to contain them.

The Housemaid is less a meticulous Hitchcockian puzzle than a gift box gloriously overloaded with 1990s-style domestic menace. You may roll your eyes at some of the contrivances, you may guess one or two twists, but it's hard not to smile when Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney try to outdo each other in madness, suffering, and intelligence under Paul Feig's indulgent gaze. This is the kind of movie that works best during a late-night screening, with an audience gasping, laughing, and sometimes responding to the screen, and that's exactly how it should be consumed. As a refined, deliberately ridiculous, female-driven pulp film, it more than fulfills its role. The Housemaid is a true guilty pleasure that wears its guilt like another perfectly chosen accessory.

The Housemaid
Directed by Paul Feig
Written by Rebecca Sonnenshine
Based on The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
Produced by Todd Lieberman, Laura Fischer, Paul Feig
Starring Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Michele Morrone, Elizabeth Perkins
Cinematography: John Schwartzman
Music by Theodore Shapiro
Production companies: Feigco Entertainment, Hidden Pictures
Distributed by Lionsgate (United States), Metropolitan FilmExport (France)
Release date: December 19, 2025 (United States), December 24, 2025 (France)
Running time: 131 minutes

Seen on December 28, 2025, in Meaux at UGC Le Majestic, theater 7, seat F5

Mulder's Mark: