The Housemaid (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

The Housemaid

THE HOUSEMAID (2025)

Starring Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Michele Morrone, Elizabeth Perkins, Indiana Elle, Mark Grossman, Hannah Cruz, Megan Ferguson, Ellen Tamaki, Amanda Joy Erickson, Alaina Surgener, Einar Haraldsson, Maury Ginsberg, Matt Walton, Iván Amaro Bullón, Don DiPetta, Sophia Bunnell, Cailen Fu, Alexandra Seal and Brian D. Cohen.

Screenplay by Rebecca Sonnenshine.

Directed by Paul Feig.

Distributed by Lionsgate. 131 minutes. Rated R.

Paul Feig, a director who came up specializing in comedies (Freaks and Geeks, Bridesmaids, Spy, the all-female Ghostbusters reboot), has found a new specialty – turning cheesy murder beach read mystery bestsellers about two female bickering frenemies into Hollywood comedy thriller gold.

The first shot of this was the 2018 film A Simple Favor – based on the novel of the same name by Darcey Bell about two suburban moms who get involved in a deeply disturbing mystery plot which involves disappearances, long-ago murders, infidelity, identical twins and mommy blogs. This year’s sequel Another Simple Favor continued that story, although it was an original story not based upon a novel, and had lesser results.

Now, Feig is taking on Freida McFadden’s potboiler The Housemaid. And honestly, this feels more like the spiritual successor to A Simple Favor than that film’s actual sequel. Like with A Simple Favor, it has two beautiful female leads who butt heads in a gorgeous modern mansion over things like disappearances, long-ago murders and infidelity. (Luckily, this time around there were no identical twins or mommy blogs lurking in the background.)

While not as obviously arch as A Simple Favor, The Housemaid does have some surprisingly funny and camp elements. However, for the most part, this is a much more serious story.

It starts out rather simply. Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney) is a young woman who goes for a job interview as the live-in housekeeper for the well-off Winchester family. She is hired pretty much on the spot by the sweet and perky Nina (Amanda Seyfried), the trophy wife of software tycoon Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), which kind of shocks Millie, because she apparently has some skeletons in the closet which she is sure will be exposed when Millie checks her references.

The audience finds out quickly enough that Millie is on probation, and if she doesn’t keep a job and residency she will be returned to jail. (What she actually did to deserve the jail time is not exposed until later in the story.) However, she gets the job, and Nina quickly turns from the ideal boss to completely overbearing and playing constant head games with her new employee. However, Millie can’t lose the job for fear of being arrested again.

Sweeney is basically playing the role that Seyfried would have played about ten years ago.

It’s an odd concept, but one that has a page-turning immediacy. From day one, it seems like there must be something more going on than what appears to be. Seyfried’s character is so flagrantly insane, and the husband is so apparently perfect that it becomes obvious early on that something much more complicated must be going on below the surface.

When the coin finally drops, it is a bit over-the-top, but it makes for lurid fun.

The film works mostly because of Seyfried. She recognizes the b-movie vibe of this film and plays her character as so over the top, so eccentrically evil that her performance sort of overshadows her more buttoned-down co-stars Sydney and Sklenar.

The story doesn’t always make sense and there are some pretty big plot holes, but The Housemaid plays as the movie equivalent of the kind of pulp fiction beach read that made the original novel so popular in 2022. If you just give in to The Housemaid’s bizarre world, it makes for a pretty entertaining trip. 

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 19, 2025.