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I will fully admit for the first half of The Housemaid I was thoroughly unimpressed. Two-dimensional and hackneyed, the film felt like a cartoony Single White Female rip off. Seyfried's character behaved very much in an unrealistic manner that took me out of the film. Sklenar's character didn't react in a way that felt honest. But The Housemaid is a good example of why I don't stop watching a film because I am not enjoying it from the start.
It is hard not to talk about what makes The Housemaid work without spoiling it so stop reading here if you don't want the end spoiled.
The film sells itself in the trailers as a war between two women and the first act leans in to that. I was responding emotionally to having to sit through another of those rather rote and, honestly misogynist, tales as old as time, and one that wasn't done in a convincing manner. The characters all felt over-simplified the the plot full of convenient coincidences.
And then the film becomes what it actually trying to be and it makes more sense why Seyfried too this role, an actor whose choices as an actor up to this point wouldn't suggest she'd do a movie like this. The real villain here isn't Sweeney or Seyfried. It is the one we are conditioned to expect the least. It's Sklenar.
Skelnar is an actor who has likability written all over him. He is handsome and sexy in a way that is generally non-threatening and approachable. He has played very likeable characters up to this point. Him playing an abusive character, one who no one recognizes due to his attractiveness, is brilliant casting and he pulls off the transition from the hunk the audience has been drooling over to a threatening villain quite realistically. The film plays its audience in the way real abusers play their audiences. It makes us complicit in its game to highlight the way this plays out in the real world. Now the reasons why Seyfried and Sklenar's characters acted the way they did in the beginning made sense. Now I was fully onboard.
The film uses the tropes of the sexual thriller so the story does become more extreme than it needs to be. It starts to jump the shark by the end but its mind games are delicious enough for me to forgive some of that. So yeah the final resolution feels a bit over the top. The plays its audience again getting us to root for the violence that is coming. It's a smartly made film even if its ending goes in directions that I think undercut some of its power. But also makes for a cinematic, crowd pleasing ending.
The Housemaid
Starring: Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Elizabeth Perkins, Michele Morrone, Indiana Elle
Director: Paul Fieg
Writer: Rebecca Sonnenshine
