WHAT IT IS ABOUT
The Housemaid follows Millie (Sydney Sweeney), a broke woman trying to rebuild her life after a criminal record. She takes a live-in housemaid job with the wealthy Winchester family on Long Island for a fresh start. Hired by the volatile Nina (Amanda Seyfried), Millie quickly discovers strict rules, locked-off areas of the house, and a tense, shifting atmosphere that pulls her deeper into the family’s dysfunction, especially the strain between Nina and her husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar).
WHERE IT COMES FROM
The Housemaid adapts Freida McFadden’s hugely popular 2022 novel, now expanded into a longer-running series. It pairs Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney as the two leads, and they arrive here from very different career moments. Seyfried has spent the last few years leaning into more serious, indie work, and she is coming off an acclaimed, awards-worthy turn in The Testament of Ann Lee. The Housemaid gives her a chance to cut loose in a slicker thriller mode, territory where she has already proven herself in Jennifer’s Body and Chloe 15 years ago. Sweeney, on the other hand, has had a rough 2025, stacking disappointments, from the failed Oscar-bait Christy to the Ron Howard catastrophe Eden.
Also in the mix is director Paul Feig. His strongest stretch came with the Melissa McCarthy-led comedies, but he has shown he can handle this kind of psychological thriller, especially with the delightful A Simple Favor. Earlier this year, he returned to that world with a middling sequel, making The Housemaid his second swing at the thriller space in 2025.
HOW IT WORKS ON SCREEN
Feig feels more engaged this time, and The Housemaid plays like a cleaner follow-up to A Simple Favor than the sequel ever managed to be. The score, sleek visuals, and great-looking cast give it a glossy-thriller sheen, and for a while it is genuinely effective, establishing its characters quickly and sustaining suspense.
A big reason is the two well-matched leads. Sweeney is strong here, easily her best work of the year, but this is Seyfried’s film. It is satisfying to see her back in this mode, and the script gives her plenty of room to play. Nina is scary, unpredictable, and hard to look away from, and Seyfried still manages to make her sympathetic even when she is being cruel to Millie. You buy her love for her daughter, even as the film shows how mean she can be.
The film also lands an intelligent twist that genuinely surprised me and took a few seconds to process fully. Like a good twist, it forces you to rethink what you have been watching, and it does so without leaving a trail of obvious plot holes.
Still, there are two main frustrations holding it back. Firstly, Feig never quite makes it feel sexy. Despite the nudity and multiple sex scenes, the film tends to slip into a Fifty Shades of Grey vibe, with overly synthetic, pulsing needle-drops that stick so closely to the Grey formula that the scenes feel cheap. It’s disappointing to see how much that film’s awkward template still influences how these scenes get staged, more than a decade later.
A bigger issue is that once the twist is revealed, the film really struggles to find a satisfying ending. It keeps going beyond the two-hour mark, and you start to notice its length. It pushes credibility, but unfortunately not in a fun, over-the-top way. Instead, it seems eager to explain everything, and the ending becomes a little too tidy for its own good. It might have been more impactful if it had wrapped up about 20 minutes earlier, leaving a few things a bit open to interpretation.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Overall, The Housemaid proves Feig can still deliver a slick, suspenseful crowd-pleaser, largely thanks to Seyfried and Sweeney’s performances and a well-built reveal. It just runs too long and tries too hard to explain itself on the way out.
