
A trio of spellbinding performances anchors a sometimes successful new domestic thriller, Paul Feig’s The Housemaid (B-). The twisty film follows a young woman with a troubled past, played by a deadpan and eerily relatable Sydney Sweeney, hired as the live-in help for a wealthy family, the delightfully cuckoo Amanda Seyfried and smoldering hubbie Brandon Sklenar. Their seemingly idyllic life unravels when it becomes quickly clear the household hides some scandalous Stepford-level secrets. Rebecca Sonnenshine’s screenplay based on the 2022 Freida McFadden novel popularized on BookTok mostly delivers on the delicious conceits of the three-hander, although it pushed toward a hopeful level of campiness not fully realized. Both women are glorious in their equally emotional and physical roles, and Sklenar proves a powerful screen presence in his scenes opposite each. The movie is not overly scary or suspenseful and takes its time introducing grislier themes. It works best when snarkiness or sexiness rise to the occasion. The film’s crafts are top-notch with Naomi Munro’s posh production design and John Schwartzman’s cinematography providing a bountiful take on a garishly hypnotic and vaguely Hitchcokian suburbia. The film should have been more judiciously edited but is largely the kind of fun throwaway thriller we don’t get enough of at the movies these days.