“You never let an attractive woman take a power position in your home.”
This is actually a quote from the 1992 pulp hit The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, one of many juicy 90s thrillers (see also Single White Female) which involved one unhinged woman wreaking havoc and destroying the stable life of another by stealing her man, her home, and her life—chaos that sometimes culminated with a stiletto heel rammed into someone’s eyeball. These films told us women apparently could only interact with jealousy and rage toward one another. Why be friends when a catfight is so much more fun?
The Housemaid harkens back to these films with open glee, with lovely Sydney Sweeney as Millie, a desperate young woman interviewing with Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) to be a live-in housemaid in her and her husband’s super-fancy house. It’s an opportunity too good to be true for Millie: She’s newly on parole after 10 years in prison, is living in her car, and needs a stable job and living situation to avoid getting sent back to the Big House. Sensing a warm, kindred spirit in Nina, Millie immediately says yes when offered the job.
When Millie moves in, there’s obviously been a bait-and-switch. The pristine house of the interview is now trashed, Nina is snappy and demanding, and Millie is awakened on her first morning to Nina rampaging in the kitchen, slamming drawers and throwing shit around. Nina’s husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) is a freakin’ saint, trying to talk his wife down and hold the home together. Millie is shook.
Meanwhile, Millie is also tasked with helping out with the couple’s strangely crabby, dough-like daughter, who is an untalented ballerina and who openly scoffs at Millie’s attempts at playtime. Millie can find no allies in Nina’s toity ladies circle, who are a bunch of catty bitches who will cut down their “friend” as soon as she’s out of the room. Those ladies’ own maids and nannies seem just as cliquey, twittering about how Nina is known by all as being completely cray-cray. Poor handsome, hot Andrew, they cluck. Millie is stuck.
It’s no surprise that The Housemaid will get twisty and even more unhinged as it becomes clear that the Winchesters have a lot of dark secrets in their curated closet. I won’t divulge the turns, but as soon as you see a spiral staircase, you know that someone will eventually topple over, or that no good will come of the fact that the live-in housemaid’s attic bedroom door only has a lock on the outside. Even the exaggerated presentation of precious family heirloom china gives you the tingly promise that the centerpiece platter will hopefully get smashed over someone’s head or its shards will be gouged into an eyeball.
But I have to admit that the build-up to the mayhem was giving me a big feeling of yuck. Nina is presented as clearly mentally ill as a plot device. Pills are flushed down the toilet, makeup smeared, and garishly embarrassing displays of unhingement are on display for the society folks (and the audience) to tut-tut over. Husband Andrew, so very handsome with his perfect teeth, is swooned over by his mother, the society wives, and even Millie (and the audience) is susceptible to his inarguable hotness. Unstable Nina, on the other hand, is an embarrassment and a problem. As mental illness has come out of the closet in recent years, this part of the film came across as a sort of cruel, retro exploitation.
Now, if you know the plot of The Housemaid in advance (it’s based on a best-selling thriller by Freida McFadden), you’ll, I’m sure, be leaning forward in anticipation, knowing of the careening, wild turns of the plot that fill the second half. And yes, the second half is, indeed, lots of fun. Comeuppance is to be had, and even some of my doubts about the plot in general were smoothed out. But I’m not sure, at least for this viewer, the payout was worth it.
