The job market’s tough for everyone, especially for The Housemaid protagonist Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney). Recently out on parole after a lengthy prison sentence, she needs a job and a place to live. Otherwise, it’s back to the big house for her. Luckily, an exquisite opportunity appears from the wealthy Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried). She’s passionate about hiring Mille to clean, keep the lavish house ship-shape, and cook for Nina, her husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), and their daughter Cecilia (Indiana Elle) as the titular housemaid.

Quickly, Millie discovers Nina isn’t especially consistent or mentally stable. These psychological problems soon manifest through Nina tormenting Millie and blaming her for everything that goes wrong in her household. Andrew provides a calmer, more controlled counterbalance to his partner that the new housemaid finds erotically enticing. In this mansion where everything looks so perfect, grisly secrets lurk under the surface. Millie just wanted a stable job. Instead, she found inescapable madness.

After exploring bougie suburban thrills in 2018’s A Simple Favor, director Paul Feig returns to the terrain with Rebecca Sonnenshine’s adaptation of Freida McFadden’s 2022 novel. Feig’s presence behind the camera is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, with a decade of experience, he’s a steady hand who knows how to pace and deliver crowd-pleaser-friendly cinema competently. He also always gets strong performances from his actors. That’s confirmed here in Amanda Seyfried’s joyfully twisted and outsized turn. As anyone who’s sat through underwhelming Netflix comedies can attest, neither is a guarantee in today’s modern filmscape. Unfortunately, his straightforward visual sensibilities rob The Housemaid of the unpredictability it needs to flourish as a trashy thriller.

Feig and his go-to cinematographer, John Schwartzman, shoot with typical camera angles, routine blocking, and little ambiguity. These visual sensibilities subtly imbue the whole production with a surface-level quality. All-time great psychological thrillers like Burning, Blow Out, or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? deliver creative imagery communicating one central idea: anything can happen in this world. The Housemaid, meanwhile, opts for familiar visual cues that suggest this story can only get so wild. Wherever you think the plot is going in the first act is likely where Sonnenshine’s script will eventually land.

Speaking of the writing, it is way too reliant on dialogue for its own good. For instance, the third act begins with lengthy, back-to-back voice-over monologues from Nina and Millie explaining their respective backstories. All the verbiage further lacks the specificity-riddled, loopy wording superior thrillers embrace. Just imagine if the script instead indulged in more bizarre lines like “I used to love Doggy Chow” from Showgirls. Then we’d be cooking. All the didacticism won’t quite satisfy those craving madcap twists. It’s simply too enamored with narrative tidiness and rudimentary imagery.

However, talented below-the-line crew like production designer Elizabeth J. Jones keeps the film largely watchable. She gives each room of the Winchester mansion a tangible personality, from an eerily sterile kitchen to Andrew’s movie-themed “man cave”. Even sets glimpsed only briefly boast terrific, opulent looks. A fleetingly seen hotel hallway, for instance, features distinctive green hues and eye-catching patterns.

The feature also benefits from a lively Theodore Shapiro score. He and Feig have worked together constantly over the years, starting with 2015’s Spy. However, Shapiro flexes bolder sonic muscles—refined on Severance’s first two seasons—here. His assorted Housemaid compositions feature several welcome grandiose flourishes, including choir-based chants. These tracks aren’t afraid to exhibit tangible verve, indicating Shapiro knows what kind of atmosphere this film should conjure.

The same is true for Seyfried, the feature’s ultimate MVP. Given some of her best-known turns include singing “Honey Honey” on a Greek island, using her breasts to predict the weather, and fighting an undead Megan Fox, it’s clear she’s never been afraid of going all-in for a performance. That admirable quality is perfect for portraying the wildly unpredictable Nina. Right from the start, Seyfried commits wholesale to the character’s most outsized displays of aggression. Other times, she channels a film noir femme fatale with the way Nina devastates her help’s world without losing her composure. Ominousness. Volatility. Dark comedy. Her deliciously maximalist turn has it all.

Unfortunately, her performance only accentuates how the rest of The Handmaid is missing a pulse. While one never knows where Seyfried’s performance is going to go, Sklenar and Sweeney’s work is much more one-note. The latter performer especially struggles nailing Millie’s most rebellious or extravagant moments. This role requires someone to match Seyfried’s audacity, albeit while playing a different, more restrained character. Instead, Sweeney’s more vacant performance gets utterly lost against her superior co-star.

Attractiveness also plagues her and Sklenar’s work. Both look like computer-made visions of glistening movie stars, making it hard to invest in their characters as people. Whenever their characters disrobe, it doesn’t radiate steaminess. Rather, my mind went to just how dehydrated they must have been during shooting.

It’s a shame The Housemaid falls so short of the sum of its parts, as Seyfried’s performance is so dazzling. It is worthy of a better, more breathlessly scandalous movie. At least she gets a Kelly Clarkson-oriented sequence where she delivers 2025’s equivalent to Cameron Diaz’s Charlie’s Angels dance scene. All hail Seyfried for knowing what kind of movie the entirety of The Housemaid should’ve been.

The Housemaid begins cleaning up theaters everywhere on December 19th.

The Housemaid Trailer: