Santa left us a present this holiday season and it is exactly what we didn’t know we needed: A twisty, psychological horror-thriller with nudity that’s all wrapped up in an empowerment message.
“The Housemaid” is Paul Feig’s delicious, satirical look at the secret depravity of the ultra-rich, but it’s so well constructed that’s it’s not clear who’s naughty or nice. Halfway through, the movie zigs and everything you expected zags.
It’s almost impossible to thread the line between self-winking campy — “That’s a lot of bacon. Are you trying to kill us?” — and carving someone’s stomach with a broken piece of fine china, yet Feig and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine do.
Sydney Sweeney stars as a down-on-her luck Millie Calloway, a gal with a troubled past living out of her car who answers an ad for a live-in housekeeper in a tony suburb of New York City. Her resume is fraudulent, as are her references.
Somehow, the madam of the mansion, Nina Winchester played with frosty excellence by Amanda Seyfried in pearls and creamy knits, takes a shine to this young soul. “I have a really good feeling about this, Millie,” she says in that perky, slightly crazed clipped way that Seyfried always slays with. “This is going to be fun, Millie.”
Maybe not for Millie, but definitely for us. The young housekeeper gets her own room in the attic — weird that it closes with a deadbolt from the outside, but no matter — and we’re off. Mille gets a smartphone with the family’s credit card preloaded and a key for that deadbolt. “What kind of monsters are we?” asks Nina. Indeed.
The next day, the house is a mess when the housekeeper comes down and Seyfried is in a wide-eyed, crashing-plates, full-on psychotic rage. The sweet, supportive woman we met the day before is gone. But her hunky husband (Brandon Sklenar) is helpful and apologetic. And smoldering. Uh-oh. Did we mention he’s hunky?
If at first we understand that the housekeeper is being a little manipulative — lying to get the job, for instance, or wearing glasses to seem more serious — we soon realize that all kinds of gaslighting games are being played behind these gates, and they’re much more impactful.
Based on Freida McFadden’s novel, “The Housemaid” rides waves of manipulation and then turns the tables on what we think we’ve just seen, looking at male-female power structures and how privilege can trap people without it.
The film is as good looking as the actors, with nifty touches like having the main house spare, well-lit and bright, while the husband’s private screening room in the basement is done in a hellish red. There are little jokes throughout, like the husband and the housemaid bonding over old episodes of “Family Feud,” with the name saying it all.
Feig and his team also have fun with horror movie conventions, like having a silent, foreboding groundskeeper, adding a creepy dollhouse and placing lightning and thunder during a pivotal scene. They surround the mansion with fussy, aristocratic PTA moms who have tea parties and say things like “You know what yoga means to me.”
Feig’s fascinating combination of gore, torture and hot sex ends happily, capped off with Taylor Swift’s perfectly conjured “I Did Something Bad” playing over the end credits. Not at all: This naughty movie is definitely on the nice list.
“The Housemaid,” a Lionsgate release that’s in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong bloody violence, gore, language, sexuality/nudity and drug use. Running time: 131 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
