‘The Housemaid’ Review

When I first heard of ‘The Housemaid’, never having read the popular book it is adapting, my mind went to another psychosexual thriller with a jarringly similar title: 2016’s ‘The Handmaiden’. There are two main differences between these movies, however.

One: ‘The Handmaiden’ is Korean, from the master director Park Chan-wook, while ‘The Housemaid’ is very much a Hollywood affair, from director Paul Feig and megastars Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried.

And two: ‘The Handmaiden’ is actually good, while ‘The Housemaid’ is a pile of garbage, bereft of any worthwhile drama or thrills to justify its total sacrifice of logic and basic common sense.

Millie (Sydney Sweeney), is a young woman who has fallen on hard times, living out of her car and in desperate need of a job to satisfy her parole requirements. Her prayers seem answered when she interviews to be a live-in housemaid for the wealthy, idyllic Winchester family consisting of Nina (Amanda Seyfried), her husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) and their young daughter Cece (Indiana Elle). During Millie’s initial interview, Nina is warm, welcoming, brimming with joy and love for her family. But on her first day, Millie sees a different side of Nina, who accuses Millie of throwing away important documents as she lashes out, screaming, crying and smashing through everything in her kitchen. With the threat of jail time if she loses her employment, Millie reluctantly stays on with the Winchester family, but her suspicions grow and her wellbeing is threatened as the family’s life is increasingly shown to be not as perfect as it initially seemed.

‘The Handmaid’ is pulpy trash, I understand and I often enjoy that. And I can also understand that people will like this movie, brushing aside my critiques by saying that I’m thinking too hard and should just enjoy the ride. I get it, I really do.

And yet, what’s the right amount to think about this movie? None of the characters have any internal logic and the plot veers constantly into the most dramatic options possible in pathetic attempts to illicit shock. In a trope I truly despise, every character in the film is unnatural and suspicious until the villain is revealed, and then everybody who wasn’t the villain becomes totally normal, showing that they were only ever sinister to serve as lazy red herrings to heighten the mystery rather than for authentic character motivations.

But even the illogical characters and plotting can be forgiven if the story wasn’t so darn predictable. The first 75% of this movie is an attempt at a slow burn thriller, but that approach only works when the plotting and character beats are tight and deliberate. This approach is repetitive and infuriating when logic is thrown out the window in favor of the melodramatic over-the-top-ness of a telenovela. You can easily anticipate all of the GOTCHA moments by just expecting that every backstory, every twist and turn, will be the most overdramatic option possible, winding its way into a few bewildering tonal shifts, from out-of-place body horror into girl-boss franchise building.

The best I can say for this movie is that Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar understood the assignment, clearly appreciating the trashiness of the script and hamming it up accordingly.

The same cannot be said for Sydney Sweeney. It’s not so much that Sweeney thinks she’s in a different movie, as it is that she doesn’t seem to think she’s in a movie at all, walking through the 2 hour 11 minute runtime as the human embodiment of the Gen Z Stare. Sweeney’s flat affectation can serve her well in some roles, but compromises any attempt at erotic thriller, as her total lack of chemistry with any other performer results in a love triangle filled less with love and jealousy than detached bemusement. If the main character doesn’t seem to care about the increasingly wild goings-on, why should I?

‘The Housemaid’ is a glorified soap opera that will shamelessly push boobs in your face to distract you from the illogical plot, like throwing so much soft-core sand in your eyes. If you’re going to make a melodramatic thriller, favoring gasps at the expense of logic, then the shocks need to be shocking, rather than cheap and insulting. I love turning off my brain for the occasional trash, but I can only turn off my brain so much.

The Housemaid
Rated R for strong/bloody violent content, sexual assault, sexual content, nudity and language.
Running Time: 2 hours and 11 minutes

Director Paul Feig
Writers Rebecca Sonnenshine
Stars Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Michele Morrone, Elizabeth Perkins
Rating R
Running Time 131 Minutes
Genres Drama, Thriller