There is something to be said for a good, old fashioned trashy movie. I’m not talking “guilty pleasures” (I don’t really believe in the concept, you like something or you don’t), but rather a movie unashamed of its tastelessness. A movie that’s smart in its stupidity, that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but still manages a certain slyness along the way.
Director Paul Feig is certainly no stranger to this type of film. 2018’s “A Simple Favor,” starring Anna Kendrick as a mommy blogger who strikes up a friendship with an enigmatic, icy blonde (Blake Lively), is the platonic ideal of this genre — a silly, campy script delivered from the mouths of actors who know just how to play the preposterousness of it all.
I don’t think that Feig’s latest film “The Housemaid” (written by Rebecca Sonnenshine, based on Freida McFadden’s novel of the same name) is the best of these types of films. But it certainly lives in that lineage, and is all the better for it. The film stars Sydney Sweeney as Millie, a young woman fresh out of prison who lands a job as a maid for a wealthy housewife, Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried). As Nina becomes more demanding and increasingly erratic, Millie develops a close bond with Nina’s husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) — a bond that eventually reveals dark secrets from the couple’s past.
There is a stretch of “The Housemaid” that gets a little too big for its britches, if you will. In the moments where it tries to genuinely engage with the theme of domestic violence — a theme which it is simply not equipped to handle with any sensitivity whatsoever — it becomes a bit of a slog. But, for the most part, Feig delivers on that pageturner quality of your favorite pulpy paperback. This is a genre that thrives not on characters, or plot, or good writing, but rather on its ability to make you gasp, laugh, and groan in equal measure. And in that respect, “The Housemaid” does not disappoint.
Casting is paramount for these movies, and for the most part, “The Housemaid” knocks it out of the park. Sweeney, however, doesn’t exactly read “woman who just got out of prison and is living in her car” (her hair is far too shiny, her teeth far too perfect). But Millie doesn’t necessarily do Sweeney any favors as an actor. Millie is a confluence of contradictions — she has a doe-eyed innocence about her, but also a streak of violence. She has spent ten years of her life locked up, but seems to have zero street smarts, trusting the wiles of a generically handsome man with no questions whatsoever about his motives. Sweeney works best when she gets to play a little (or a lot) crazy — there’s a reason she’s fun to watch as Cassie on “Euphoria,” despite that character’s complete lack of coherent characterization. “The Housemaid,” unfortunately, waits a little too long to let her unload.
“The Housemaid” doesn’t, however, have the same issue when it comes to Amanda Seyfried. In this year’s “The Testament of Ann Lee,” Seyfried gives one of the best leading performances of the year. She’s raw and vulnerable, capturing the intrinsic power of spirituality in a deeply primal way. In “The Housemaid,” she unleashes something far sillier and far more performative, in the best way possible. Nina behaves not like somebody experiencing a genuine psychotic break, but like a demon plucked out of a horror movie — in one scene, Millie closes a bathroom cabinet mirror and Nina appears behind her, dead-eyed, out of thin air. There’s a delicious sort of anticipation as you wait for Seyfried to deliver a line, because you never know what she’ll go for next — sincerity, or monstrosity, or sing-songy delusion. The film’s twist allows her to play all this absurdity with a sense of purpose, but unfortunately that twist is also where the movie gets far too dark for its own good. And Seyfried is a good actor, so when she does dark, you believe her, to the film’s detriment.
For a stretch after the reveal of the twist, the darkness of what is happening to these two women takes over the film’s center, sapping most of the fun out of the frame. But, outside of that, “The Housemaid” is a great movie to watch with befuddled amusement amongst a group of strangers (mostly women) in a dark theater. There is, oddly, a lovely sense of camaraderie that can permeate a group of people when watching a movie like this. Without spoiling the twist too much (although the movie pretty purposefully telegraphs it early on), every time Nina’s husband Andrew said anything — whether it be about how beautiful Millie looks in the morning, or how much he loves being a husband and a father — the majority of the women in my theater audibly scoffed or laughed. As Andrew, Sklenar represents another good bout of casting. He’s better as a disingenuous rich guy than the swoony heroes he’s been cast to play in the past.
“The Housemaid” is the type of movie that winks at you with its stupidity, inviting you into its campiness and making you a part of the wonderful piece of trash playing out on screen. It’s a movie meant to be reacted to — meant to be seen with friends and a glass of wine, groaning at the cheesy dialogue, aghast at the audacity. There is a place for films like this in our movie-going culture, and Feig knows how to make them work.