For the past couple of years, psychological thriller author Freida McFadden has become a dominant name on bestseller lists everywhere. Her books either top the fiction list or, when it comes to the New York Times paperback fiction list, an average of four to six of her titles appear there simultaneously.
When it came to making film adaptations of her riveting thrillers, they made an excellent first choice of filming the book that introduced her to millions of readers, The Housemaid.
Has McFadden’s brand of psychological thrillers successfully transitioned to the big screen with this maiden effort? The answer is a spine-chilling “yes”.
The story focuses on Millie, a young woman who is down on her luck after being paroled from a lengthy prison sentence. To try and set herself on the straight and narrow, she applies for a position as a live-in housemaid to a well-to-do young family who reside in New York’s affluent Long Island area.
Her future employers, the Winchester family, consist of husband Andrew, wife Nina, and young daughter Cecilia. During the interview process, Nina is enthusiastic about the prospect of having Millie work as their housemaid, and the feeling is mutual. However, when Nina turns the kitchen upside down when her notes for an upcoming speech are misplaced, Millie begins to suspect that maybe accepting the job wasn’t such a good idea.
And it doesn’t get better in the subsequent weeks under the Winchesters’ roof. Millie is subject to Nina’s on-again, off-again, unpredictable behaviour that borders on gaslighting. However, Andrew is always there to calm his wife and defuse these situations before they explode. But it’s a night in New York City with Andrew and Millie that lights the fuse and explodes the powder keg of this domestic dynamic.
That’s when the viewers (and readers of the book) get a generous serving of McFadden’s signature plot twists, which give the narrative a whole new, suspenseful dimension.
No doubt, the movie version of The Housemaid is quite faithful to the book, making for a chilling, edge-of-your-seat two hours of viewing. And thanks to this plot twist, it’s almost like experiencing two movies in one.
Another strength of this movie is the captivating performances by the cast. That is especially the case with the yin/yang chemistry of leads Sydney Sweeney as Millie and her calm, steely approach to the unraveling situation set before her, and Amanda Seyfried as Nina with her manic-depressive, paranoid persona that teeters between enthusiastic energy and outright madness. Add to that Brandon Sklenar’s riveting performance as Andrew, who succeeds in portraying himself as a hero and voice of reason, but has a dark side that adds an element of the macabre.
The Housemaid opens the door to a new chapter in the “from page to screen” type of horror movies, and offers plenty of the elements that are associated with this genre, not to mention a lot of the unexpected from ordinary settings that will grab you by the throat when you least expect it…and never lets you go until the last scare is accomplished.
review by Stuart Nulman
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