REVIEW:
The Housemaid was surprisingly a really good movie! I say surprisingly, and maybe I shouldn’t have thought that, given that it’s Paul Feig directing. This guy does movies about women like nobody else, from Bridesmaids to Spy to The Heat. But he’s generally been proven to be a comedy director. His one turn into suspense, A Simple Favor, was just okay. Good, but not great. The Housemaid proves that he is actually very talented in this genre as well.
Funny enough, the movie that this feels closest to is indeed A Simple Favor, what with its story about two women who meet as strangers, and are keeping deep and dark secrets from each other. The Housemaid is the story about a woman with a checkered past who gets a job working as a Nanny for a family. Funny how the word “Nanny,” is never mentioned, although that’s essentially what she is, taking care of the daughter of the family more than anything else. In her spare time at the house, however, she does cook and clean and do all of the usual house chores.
She is live in help, and is given her own bedroom up in the roof of the house, which is almost more like an attic. This woman, Millie (played by Sydney Sweeney,) has spent some time in prison. We learn that early on. The movie opens with her driving up to the house, meeting the woman who she will be working for, Nina (Amanda Seyfried,) and getting a tour of the house. Then as Millie drives away we get her voice over, telling us about the prison time and how she expects to never hear back from Nina. Only, of course, she’s wrong. We also see that Millie is living out of her car, sleeping in her car, and being woken by police who tell her she can’t sleep there, in the parking lot.
So things are bad for Millie when she takes the job. And we quickly learn that the job itself, which seems so perfect from the outside, is not so great once it begins. Nina is very unpleasant. She blames Millie for things, and does not treat Millie very well at all. Luckily, her husband, Andrew, is just perfect. He is nice and calming, and helps resolve every conflict between Nina and Millie. This makes up the first hour of the film.
I won’t disclose what happens in the second hour (really forty minutes, in a film that is one hour forty, which is so nice at a time when most well-known directors pad their movies and make them well over two hours, leaving the audience thinking about what could have been cut to make the movie tighter and more engaging.) Not the case here. Every moment counts. And the second half is full of surprises that you never see coming.
What works about this movie is the way that there are so many secrets and so many hidden agendas. Right off the bat, when Millie drives away, we learn her secrets and think that having the other characters find these out might make up the bulk of the movie. Then we start the job with Millie and learn that Nina has a dark side and a few secrets of her own, such as what once happened when she was left alone with her daughter during bath time. This is still just scratching the surface. The focus and secrets and revelations keep changing. This is like the kind of movie they used to make in the nineties (The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female,) only the much smarter, twistier, more creative version. Those movies might have had thrills, but they also were pretty straight forward. With this one, there are hidden secrets around every corner. All three actors bring their A game to this one. It’s a whole lot of fun.