This review does contain some spoilers. A friend of mine lent me two of the Housemaid books written by Freida McFadden. They are psychological thrillers and we have both been looking forward to watching the first film of perhaps a series. We went to The Stag Theatre and Cinema to watch the film. it is nice to support small independent venues where possible.

Sydney Sweeney plays, Milly, the housemaid of the title. I know that she is fantastic actress, her performance in Reality proved that as did her role as fourteen year old Eden in the Handmaid’s Tale. Eden’s story was one of the saddest and most memorable in the entire six seasons. The other thing that twenty eight year old Sweeney is known for is of course her amazing figure. I feel that in the Housemaid she wasn’t even trying to act, she just put on a lot of sexy outfits and said her lines. There are a number of sex scenes where she isn’t wearing any outfits at all. Amanda Seyfried on the other hand, who plays Nina Westchester, Milly’s seemingly deranged employer was fantastic. Her coming off the rails was disturbingly fun to watch.

I was a little confused as to why Enzo, one of the main characters in the books, has been so sidelined in the film. He is there, broodingly played by Michele Morrone but his screen-time is very short. If the sequels are made into films then he will have to be featured more heavily. In the books Nina’s daughter CeCe is very standoffish and makes a lot of trouble for Milly but but this didn’t really translate to the film. Andrew’s elegant, cold and steely mother, played by Elizabeth Perkins provides a hint as to what is really going on. The scenes with the bitchy PTA mothers are, unfortunately, genuinely representative of how spoiled woman who have nothing better to do than gossip, behave.

No one in this story is really what they appear to be. Is it really Milly’s dream to clean rich people’s fabulous houses or is she in desperate need of this job? Nina’s husband, Andrew, played by Brandon Sklenar, is far too smarmy and good looking to be anything but a bad apple and then there’s the most interesting character of all, Nina. Nina in her head-to-toe cream Ralph Lauren outfits and her almost perfect blonde hair, apart from the visible roots. Seyfried and Sweeney look disarmingly very alike, with their big eyes and long blonde hair.

The film is two and a quarter hours long but I have to say I was engrossed. There is some gore and lots of sex. The tension is there but at points it almost crosses over onto comedy territory, I am not sure whether this was deliberate or not. It isn’t the most intelligent movie you’ll watch but, like the books, it is very entertaining in a trashy sort of way. Sweeney has had a couple of flops on her hands where she played plain Janes, in Christy she played a boxer, and I heard one podcaster say that she is too young to be uglifying herself. A rather misogynistic way of looking at a young woman’s career but The Housemaid is already proving to be a huge new year hit with Sweeney in full sexy mode.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Myke Simon on Unsplash