131 min | R | December 19, 2025 | Lionsgate
A domestic thriller that actually earns its twist. Amanda Seyfried is the reason to show up.
The twist here genuinely lands. In a genre stuffed with predictable reveals, The Housemaid manages to pull off a third act that reframes everything before it. Credit to Paul Feig for the misdirection and Rebecca Sonnenshine’s adaptation of the Freida McFadden novel.
Amanda Seyfried is doing the heavy lifting. Her Nina Winchester walks the line between sympathetic and sinister in a way that keeps you guessing. Sydney Sweeney holds her own as the housemaid with secrets of her own. The power dynamics between them crackle when the movie lets them breathe.
The torture elements didn’t work for me. The movie gets dark in ways that feel gratuitous rather than earned. Some sequences exist purely for shock value and the film would be tighter without them.
Still, this is a crowd-pleaser that knows what it is. Nearly $300 million at the box office says audiences were hungry for a twisty thriller done competently. Not everything needs to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes you just want a well-executed mystery with strong performances and a satisfying payoff. This delivers that.