In with a whimper and out with the trash
A friend recently suggested to me that 2025 has seen a reduction of left wing politics in popular culture. I politely asked him if he had gone both deaf and blind. The Housemaid is a case in point. Paul Feig and Rebecca Sonnenshine have conspired to unleash yet another entertainment for the type of people who believe The Handmaid's Tale is a reasonable allegory for modern America.
There are comically evil straight white males in the main storyline, the backstory of the first female heroine, in the flashbacks for the second female heroine and the dopy sequel set-up. Housemaid 2: This Time is Even More Ridiculous.
The central straight white male of The Housemaid is a man who lives behind a gate with his initial on it. Say less.
The miscreant inherited all his money. Say less.
The wretch works in tech! Say less. OK, but what is a Data Processing company? Does Chandler work there?
Freida McFadden's novel hasn't landed on my TBR list. My first exposure to The Housemaid was the trailer I saw a few weeks ago. As the moving pictures of the pretty house and the even prettier ladies unfolded in front of me I said to myself, "So the husband's a monster. Got it."
Perhaps things like storytelling, nuance, character development, suspense and satisfying plot twists are gauche and passé. The only thing that matters, apparently, is consistently getting the message out there. The message which decrees all rich people are bad, especially if they're straight and white and male. Feig proves himself particularly committed to the bit. Anything to get back into the studio good graces, I guess.
A skirmish broke out in a comments section when someone had the audacity to highlight, "No woman would ever invite a housemaid that looks like Sydney Sweeney into their home." Naturally someone shot back, "That's sexist!". When there is no better argument to make, use one of the following words; sexist, racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic, xenophobic. One of them is sure to stick.
Never mind that most housemaids, nannies or live in help look nothing like Sydney Sweeney. If they did, most wives would say, "Hell, no!" We can't have an honest conversation about serious matters such as domestic abuse when some viewers won't admit the set-up for The Housemaid is ludicrous. Instead Feig force feeds us a steady diet of HGTV eye candy with side orders of beefcake and malarkey.
Speaking of Sydney Sweeney, she sure needed a hit. Thanks to her character Millie, Sweeney won't have to milk the jeans controversy that has dogged her for much of the year. Millie is the type of sad sack that has to buy her clothes off the rack but still knows how to make a good melon salad or serve jugs of juice.
Amanda Seyfried takes time off from disparaging dead men to portray the glamourous, garrulous cray cray wife. Fellas, these two don't make out. Feels like a real missed opportunity.
Brandon Sklenar appears as Andrew, Gaslighter extraordinaire. Between The Housemaid and Drop, Sklenar is Hollywood's latest hunk du jour. This guy is so hot I'd be worried if he was my masseuse. It is easy to understand how he could pseudo reverse Pretty Woman all these females and at such a young age.
The two biggest issues with modern movies is the aforementioned reliance on left wing tropes and the fact they go on too long. It takes an ungodly 75 minutes before Feig finally reveals what anyone with a modicum of sense has known all along. A film redolent of so many other lasses in a lurch narratives didn't need to take this so long to unfurl.
The Housemaid is not a film to be taken seriously. It is outlandish over the top nonsense. It is also, in its own way, beautiful visual gibberish with several hysterical moments. I'm still at a loss for why I was the only one laughing in the theatre.
The conclusion requires zero interpretive skills. A variation on the Gone Girl ending was sitting there on a tee. Alas, that fabled nuance is mostly a lost art in a mostly lost year for movies. The Housemaid is right about exactly one thing. Barry Lyndon is a masterpiece.
Greta understands the irony.
