movie review
THE HOUSEMAID
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.review-block-star { –review-block-star–empty-color: #585858; –review-block-star–fill-color: #000; }
.review-block-star { –review-block-star–empty-color: #585858; –review-block-star–fill-color: #000; }
.review-block-star { –review-block-star–empty-color: #585858; –review-block-star–fill-color: #000; }
Running time: 131 minutes. Rated R (strong/bloody violent content, sexual assault, sexual content, nudity and language). In theaters Dec. 19.
My favorite line from “The Housemaid” was, unusually, not spoken by a character who’s actually in the movie.
During a scene in which new domestic helper Millie, played by Sydney Sweeney, is up late watching TV with her boss’ hot husband, an outraged woman in the theater shouted, “She’s spilling out of her shirt!”.
The room erupted.
Then Nina, maniacally played by Amanda Seyfried, walked in on the cozy pair. Almost as if the lady of the house heard the loudmouth audience member through the screen, she sternly added, “You need to dress appropriately from now on.”
Good luck with that.
Truly every line of this gussied up pile of trash is worthy of a yelled-out crowd response. It’s one schlocky horror picture show.
Not that it’s juicy, funny, freaky or even campy enough to become a cult classic for college dorm rooms and a case of PBR. But it passes the time and is never boring. “The Housemaid” is made to one day autoplay on Hulu while you’re vacuuming.
The dumbness of the movie from director Paul Feig — the Archduke of Dumb — starts off as an asset.
How can you not laugh when a rich kid who’s practically a child of the corn ghoulishly says, “Juice is a privilege, not something you drink out of a dirty glass.”?
Or when Nina’s elaborately coiffed other half Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) ogles his live-in employee like she’s got bunny ears?
That mindless mirth stops dead when the film, which has #MeToo messaging, asks to be taken with a modicum of seriousness.
There’s gore and mutilation, plus a meh-stery Scooby-Doo explanation of the situation that comes together in flashbacks. You’re basically at remedial “Gone Girl.”
Freida McFadden’s 2022 hit book and the film based on it are both described as psychological thrillers. But that seems off — like calling “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” a novella.
There’s a single deep question that powers the first half of the story: Why would any married woman hire Sydney Sweeney to live and work in her home while sometimes being left alone with her man?
I’ll give McFadden this: She answers it.
Millie has been sleeping in her car after getting paroled from prison. The ex-con needs to land a job, otherwise she must serve the remaining five years of her sentence.
Determined, she slaps on a pair of fake glasses and lies her way into the Long Island mini-manse of Nina, who seems nice at first but is really Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest.”
Don’t f–k with her, fellas!
Nina shrieks like a fire alarm when her PTA speech notes get lost and irrationally blames poor Millie. The unhinged monster forces her employee, who moves into the spooky attic, to use a phone she provides and gets into frightening fights with her hubby behind closed doors.
She’s complicated. Like Millie, Nina has secrets.
But unlike Sweeney, Seyfried shows skills. Her fraying suburban mom has the same creepy possessed quality of her Elizabeth Holmes in “The Dropout,” only with a threatening unpredictability.
Can’t say the same of Sweeney, though. Taking two steps back from her strong showing in the flop boxing biopic “Christy,” the actress behaves here with the indifference of a tourist sunbathing. She hasn’t got a care in the world. So, why should we?
As Millie’s predicament escalates in terror, monotonous Sweeney reaches for the Banana Boat.
The sharp turn “The Housemaid” takes midway through is decent. A run-in in New York City between Andrew and Millie that the viewer fully expects to happen cunningly misdirects from bigger things still to come. We start to see every character — well, except static Millie — very differently.
However, post-twist the movie deflates. A brooding gardener is a “Desperate Housewives” Season 7 reject.
You can’t stop poking holes in the premise, and it gains unearned self-righteousness as it heads to the finish. A film this stupid cannot also be empowering.
The motive of the main character is lazily chalked up to a strict childhood, and that the ending boils down to “blame the patriarchy!” is too easy a way out.
Forgetting her duster at home, “The Housemaid” cuts corners.
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