‘The Housemaid’ Review: Amanda Seyfried Turns in Her Second Great Performance of 2025 in Thriller Too Timid to Go Full Camp

Seyfried seems to be the only one who knows how this Paul Feig-directed adaptation of Freida McFadden's bestselling novel should function.

You should absolutely see Paul Feig’s “The Housemaid” with a crowd. Not because the ostensible thriller is “scary” (it’s rife with not even jump scares, just steadily gliding cameras that reveal someone menacingly standing just outside of the frame), but because this almost-camp adaptation is miles more fun when taken in with a raucous audience. Horror films are generally the best genre for packed theaters— especially if you, like me, cherish the moments when perfect strangers wisely yell at the screen, “Don’t go in there!” — with comedies running a close second, and Feig’s latest combines both sensibilities, though neither to their full power.

At full power, however? Star Amanda Seyfried, turning in her second great performance of the year, behind her career-best work in Mona Fastvold’s “The Testament of Ann Lee.” As embittered, possibly nuts, and wonderfully unhinged housewife Nina Winchester, Seyfried gets to operate in many different registers. Swanning about her Long Island mansion in resplendent whites and creams (costume designer Renee Ehrlich Kalfus nails “quiet luxury” and then some), she zings between warm and whacked-out, gaslighting proving to be her favorite activity. Or is it? (If that’s the sort of joke you like, you’ll appreciate “The Housemaid.”)

Less compelling: co-star Sydney Sweeney, cast here as the titular housemaid and without much demand in the way of her own emotional vagaries. When we first meet Millie, she’s struggling. She has no family or friends, she lives in her car, and her professional prospects are bleak. Early on, she tells us (via a scattered and oft-abandoned voiceover) that her long stint in prison (pardon?) sure seems to get in the way of good gigs, so when she books an interview at the Winchester mansion for a spot as their (you guessed it) housemaid, she’s excited but trepidatious. Why should this job work out?

Based on Freida McFadden’s bestselling novel of the same name, “The Housemaid” is meant to hinge on twists and shocks and surprises, but it proves to be much more sturdy (and just plain fun) when leaning into its absurdities. Running over two hours, the entire thing sparks when Seyfried is on screen, and flails when she’s not. Too bad it’s not called “The Housewife.”

When Millie accepts the job from Nina, it comes with all sorts of perks, including her own room (a creepy space at the top of the house that makes “Flowers in the Attic” look positively luxe). And then there’s Nina’s hot husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar, exhibiting the same flat-lining range as seen in “It Ends with Us”), who seems to be steady in all the ways we soon learn Nina is not.

Andrew is “in tech,” but he designed the house to his specifications, a red flag if there ever was one (it’s fine enough on a room-by-room basis but absolutely hideous when considered as one complete abode). But he’s also sexy and smiley, an attentive dad who tuts and sighs over his nutball wife and dotes on their daughter. Soon enough, he and Millie are making doe eyes at each other over her homemade quiche while Nina rages about the house. What could possibly go wrong?

Well.

Despite her time spent locked up, Millie seriously lacks street smarts. She may be a hard worker, but she’s woefully unable to read other people’s intentions, and even worse at masking her own. In everyday life, this could make for some complications. In the heightened world of “The Housemaid,” it’s likely to be lethal. And Feig, McFadden, and co-screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine are eager to milk that for all its potential worth.

Nina’s behavior is wild enough to scare anyone — an early sequence that sees Seyfried tearing her kitchen apart in a mad fury would be Bonafide Oscar Bait in a different sort of film — but Millie is also deluged by whisperings from all sides. The other nannies tell her tales about Nina’s stint in a psych ward. Nina’s rich bitch “friends” whisper about her mental instability over tea and crumpets (and while conveniently ignoring that Millie is right there to overhear it all). Andrew bemoans how his sweet wife has changed, while also lightly suggesting she may have murdered her own parents as a child. (His obsession with her darkening roots is an early indicator he might not be all he’s cracked up to be, a recurring gag that steadily ebbs between very funny and very scary.)

All of this is prime fodder for an engaged audience, who can enjoy multiple flashing red warning signs in the film’s first half, plenty enough to inspire, yes, repeated yells to “just get the hell out of there, lady!” But Millie is trapped. She needs this job. Nina needs her to be there. “The Housemaid” needs, well, a goddamn housemaid.

As Millie gets sucked further into the Winchesters’ drama, not all is what it seems. (Of course it’s not, anyone who has ever read a paperback thriller will yell at the scream, fellow audience members, out in the theater’s lobby.) Fans of McFadden’s book — and anyone with a keen eye for winking melodrama — will see what’s happening from a mile away, and while Feig’s resistance to going full camp on this one stings, it’s diverting enough semi-shlock. It’s certainly interesting counter-programming for the holiday season.

Pickier viewers might balk, however, as fine details aren’t exactly in high supply here. Without spoiling the film’s big twists, it’s imperative that we understand that Millie was picked for this role for a reason, though how Nina came to find her is a mystery. As seemingly (?) sympathetic groundsman Enzo, Michele Morrone frowns a lot, sometimes sexily. Elizabeth Perkins has fun as Andrew’s obviously evil mom, but there’s simply no there there. Is Nina’s daughter Cecilia (Indiana Elle, self-imposed in a compelling way) on Team Nina or Team Andrew? Hard to say!

Alas, it’s not veracity that rules in stories like “The Housemaid,” but the often mealy delights of Feig’s latest film are routinely thrown into sharp relief by Seyfried’s crisp performance. Motivations, emotions, and machinations might be the building blocks of this sort of housebound thriller, but a genuinely good performance? That’s what can really wipe the floor.

Grade: C+

Lionsgate will release “The Housemaid” in theaters on Friday, December 19.

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