Tuesday, December 16, 2025
The Housemaid
Based on Freida McFadden's bestselling novel, the film begins as a sleek social thriller before sliding into horror comedy, keeping the audience hooked with the promise that nothing is quite what it seems. What starts as an escape fantasy steadily mutates into a story of buried rage, class tension, and karmic payback.
Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney) is desperate to outrun her past, and a live-in housemaid job with the wealthy Winchesters feels like salvation. From the moment she moves into the attic, the idea of escape hangs over her like a dare. Her employer, Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), projects privileged perfection until her volatility turns daily routines into psychological traps. Nina's husband, Andrew Winchester (Brandon Sklenar), appears gentler and more trustworthy, further muddying Millie's sense of where the real danger lies. Even Enzo (Michele Morrone), the watchful gardener, adds to the sense that everyone in this house is performing a role.
Director Paul Feig and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine insist that dark secrets lurk beneath immaculate surfaces. Gossip becomes a weapon, wealth a disguise, and karma an inevitability. Some plot turns stretch plausibility, but the film earns forgiveness by aligning the audience with Millie as an underdog. You share her fear and fury, and when the balance of power begins to shift, the pleasure is communal.
The satirical portrait of rich housewives is both comical and cutting, skewering curated perfection without softening the cruelty underneath. As the story accelerates, the pristine house becomes a labyrinth, restraint gives way to excess, and the film fully embraces its genre-blending instincts.
Stylish, nasty, and engineered for gasps and laughter, this movie is less interested in realism than emotional payoff, tapping into the satisfying fantasy of escaping a toxic world and watching polished facades finally collapse.
"The Housemaid" opens in theaters on Friday, December 19, 2025.
