The Housemaid features wealth porn in a slow-burn thriller

The Housemaid (M18)

131 minutes, opens on Jan 1

★★★☆☆

The story: Millie (Sydney Sweeney) turns up at the mansion of the Winchester family seeking a job as a live-in domestic helper. The wealthy Winchesters appear to be a stable, loving family unit, with their home the perfect environment for the broke, emotionally fragile Millie. But she soon finds that nothing is as it seems between Nina (Amanda Seyfried), the mistress of the house, and her husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), the handsome heir to the family fortune.

For the first two acts, this psychological thriller unfolds in a blandly direct fashion. Millie is the outsider pressing her nose against the glass that separates her from the monied, rigidly scheduled lives of her employers, and much is made of how awkward she feels.

Viewers have to sit and sympathise with actress Sweeney’s character as she, a peasant, stumbles and fumbles in the presence of the aristocratic Winchesters.

It is not as dull as it sounds, because director Paul Feig is Hollywood’s go-to guy for relatable wealth porn.

In the thrillers A Simple Favor (2018) and its sequel Another Simple Favor (2025) – set in the same upper-crust suburbs as here – he shows a talent for making privilege look desirable, a key requirement for stories about women being seduced into a moral abyss.

Most of all, Feig knows how to make domestic drama feel weighty, and that viewers are not just watching women being catty for its own sake.

Millie’s lower-class discomfort at navigating the complex interpersonal dynamics of the rich feels like it will pay off in the third act, and it does.

Sweeney’s job is to sell Millie’s transformation from powerless underling in Act 1 to becoming someone far more assured by the finale. It calls for an actress with the ability to convey Millie’s rich interior life.

Sweeney is not that actress. Feig compensates with voice-over, dream sequences and dialogue, filling the storytelling blanks that her performance leaves behind. Seyfried, as the mysterious and moody Nina, steals every scene she is in.

Millie’s steamy dreams and other bedroom scenes contribute to the film’s M18 rating, with Feig making sure that the straight female gaze is well taken care of.

There is no danger of viewers losing the plot when things start to get twisty. To an almost comical extent, side characters – ranging from a scary gardener to conveniently compromised cops – will drop in to explain the goings-on.

Hot take: Sweeney’s one-note performance nearly sinks this psychological thriller, but the project is pulled from the brink by Seyfried’s scene-stealing performance and director Feig’s smart choices.