I had two reasons to go see The Housemaid. The first one I read a novel by author Freida McFadden a couple months ago, and it was a clever little thriller. I’ve noticed that her titles all seem to follow a similar convention with a “the” and then a noun describing a person, so I guessed she wrote the story that was the basis for this movie. The second was for lead actress Sydney Sweeney. She’s gotten some heat of late with claims that she ruined her career, possibly due to her politics, which I am not sure she had said anything about so it was more out of association than anything else, but the point is, the only thing I had ever seen her in was Madame Web, and if I held it against people who appeared in that movie, I would have skipped a lot of stuff I liked with Isabela Merced in it. Sweeney, I figured, must have done something right somewhere to get as many acting jobs as she has. Or she just looks right for a certain audience demographic. Either way, I figured I should see her in something, and The Housemaid looked harmless enough.
Then when the closing credits started, I realized the movie was directed by Paul Feig, and yeah, I think I can see his influence on the look of the movie if nothing else.
Milly Calloway (Sweeney) is desperate for a job. She’s living in her car and out of prison on parole for crimes she doesn’t specify right away. She interviews for a live-in maid’s position for Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), a wealthy woman with a penchant for wearing white. Nina’s husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) owns a large tech company and has a habit of walking around in a tight sleeves undershirt. Nina also has a daughter Cecelia (Indiana Elle) who seems a little rude to Milly when they first meet, and the Italian groundskeeper (Michele Morrone) seems kinda creepy, but Milly really needs this job, so even though her resume is a pile of lies, she is pleased to take the job when Nina offers it.
However, Milly isn’t there for long before she notices that Nina’s behavior is a wee bit erratic, giving contradictory instructions, threatening to fire Milly for imagined infractions, and a host of other issues that make Nina out to be the boss from Hell one minute and an apologetic, nice woman the next. Andrew always seems quick to defend Milly from his hostile wife, but Milly just needs to save enough money to get out of that situation. But there’s probably more here than meets the eye, and Milly did go to prison for a reason. Maybe she’ll need to use some of the skills she doesn’t want to put on her resume at some point.
Alright, so I went in with so-so expectations and not really sure what to expect. What I got was the two lead actresses giving very different performances. Sweeney is playing the role straight while Seyfried is going for over-the-top with a side of camp. In Sweeney’s case, that doesn’t help. I was generally bored by her performance, and when the secrets started to come out, I was still somewhat bored by Milly’s character. As it is, Seyfried was much more entertaining, but I’ve seen her in a couple things and consider her a fairly reliable actor. When the movie actually takes some time to step away from Milly and focus on Nina, I was actually more invested in the story being told. It still wasn’t necessarily great, but I think Seyfriend understood the assignment better.
As it is, I was largely bored by long stretches of the movie. There are moments, like when Elizabeth Perkins shows up as Andrew’s cold mother, but when the movie hit the halfway point and decided to explain a few things, it was a bit more compelling, but a lot of it I think I saw coming since there are actual clues there. I think if I want to see more of McFadden’s stories, I’ll just read some of her novels. I’ll probably like those better.
Grade: C
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