| Date watched | December 31, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Show Time | 1:25pm |
| Theater | Marcel |
| Theater Number | 11 |
| Pizza | No |
| Tickets | Online - Email QR Code |
| Letterboxd Rating | **** (4.0) |
| Crew | Just Me |
What an exciting and fun ride The Housemaid turned out to be.
I went in only knowing what I’d seen in the trailer that depicted an interview for a job. Well don’t worry that happens very close to the beginning! It also is nice because I won’t be dropping any major spoilers talking about it. We immediately get a sense of how the characters and story will develop. Everything looks picturesque and perfect, but it isn’t what it seems. Millie (Sydney Sweeney) arrives with an impressive résumé and a story about finding her calling in housekeeping. She wears glasses and tries her best to make a good impression. Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) tells Millie she’s expecting, but also asks her to not tell her husband. The whole first act we have alot of, Nina says one thing in private and another in public, creating a pattern of tension and manipulation right away. Is Nina manipulating Millie or is Millie an unreliable narrator manipulating Nina?
This world felt so different from mine that, at first, I wasn’t sure I was going to really “get” the movie. I can watch wizards and spaceships and absurdity and fall right in, but this story relies on the psychological interplay between people, social expectations, and emotional boundaries. Once that clicked, the movie opened up for me. I feel like that was my greatest take away and it wasnt even explicitly part of the movie. The social relationships and societies pressure on people are not fixed. You can play with those too. I know this sounds so juvenile but anyway I want to share in case someone out there didnt get it and maybe this will help them try again. We mostly follow the hero’s journey Millie starts with nothing, struggles against the family and the situation, pays a personal cost, and eventually finds reward ending at the beginning.
Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), Nina’s husband, was vaguely familiar to me. I looked him up, he was in 1923, the Yellowstone spinoff—but otherwise he’s not in a ton of high-profile roles. Think a midpoint between Chris Evans and Josh Hartnett. There are multiple sex scenes between Millie and Andrew, but there’s also a scene between Andrew and Nina that reads as clear marital SA / r*pe scene which may be triggering for some viewers.
The movie has a small cast of 16 named roles, 10 of them women. I think that’s worth noting. If I’m off please tell me, I’m an older white guy, but I think the film works because its psychological tension relies on expectations placed on women, and how those expectations are shaped by patriarchy, the prison-industrial complex, and outdated mental health systems. Those structures help explain how characters are controlled.
Since I’m already in the meta: The Housemaid opened the same weekend as Avatar: Fire and Ash, a new SpongeBob movie, and Angel Studios’ David. It made about 8 million dollars USD on Friday and 19 million for the weekend. Rotten Tomatoes scored around 74 percent and Metacritic averaged out around 65.
Speaking of Angel Studios: they released The Sound of Freedom, marketed as a true story about stopping child trafficking, but the man the film was based on was later arrested for kidnapping. They originally started as a filtering service that pirated TV shows and edited them to align with their religious values; in 2016, they were sued by Hollywood studios for copyright violations. They used crowdfunding to pay their settlement and now use crowdfunding to produce content. The company is valued at around $1.6 billion. They launched the company publicly on September 11, 2025, which tells you something about their branding priorities. They grind my gears in a special way.
I hope this is a worthwhile and quick read. I’m still figuring out how much to discuss without spoiling too much. The point of this blog is to talk about movies, so I’ll keep working at the balance. Thanks for reading. Have a happy New Year, and I’ll see you in 2026.