THE HOUSEMAID is awful, unhinged, and so much fun.

“You didn’t deserve any of this.”

“Neither did you.”

Paul Feig’s absolutely unhinged THE HOUSEMAID hit theaters over the Christmas holiday, and I finally got around to seeing it—a trip I wasn’t exactly eager to take until I saw a post on X (née Twitter) calling the film “a dark, f****d-up Dhar Mann video.” Others claimed it was either a disaster or a masterpiece—or somehow both.

I had to see it for myself.

And boy, am I glad I did.

I’ve never read Freida McFadden’s 2022 novel, but our library’s book club did read her book The Boyfriend, which remains one of the worst novels I’ve ever endured. After seeing the film, I don’t regret skipping the book for a second.

THE HOUSEMAID follows Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney), a homeless parolee desperate for stability—sleeping in her car, washing up in rest-stop sinks, and clinging to the hope of something resembling normalcy. She lucks into what feels like the job of a lifetime: a live-in housemaid for the obscenely wealthy Winchester family of Long Island—tech mogul Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), his wife Nina (Amanda Seyfried), and their young daughter.

Almost immediately, Millie clocks that something is deeply wrong with Nina. Explosive rage, erratic mood swings, ominous threats. Millie learns of Nina’s stay in a psychiatric ward and discovers the alarming pharmacy she keeps hidden behind the bathroom mirror. It becomes clear—at least on the surface—that Andrew is trapped in a marriage with a volatile woman, and Millie begins to fall for him while anxiously guarding the truth of her own criminal past.

Of course, the truth about the Winchesters is far more deranged than either Millie—or the audience—could ever imagine.

Feig, possibly one of the most slept-on journeyman directors working today, directs THE HOUSEMAID like the rent is due. This may be his most confident and competent work yet, due in no small part to how much he—and the camera—adore his stars. Everyone has never looked better on film. Sklenar’s bulging biceps glisten in perpetually too-tight tank tops. Sweeney bounds up and down staircases bra-less. Seyfried looks positively divine, even at her most unhinged.

Feig captures all of this through frequent, intense close-ups and shoots the Winchester home like a dollhouse—the very one their daughter plays with. There’s rarely anything in the foreground, granting the audience a voyeuristic, full-view look into this pristine world. Everything is tidy and perfect… until it isn’t. And when it breaks, Feig gleefully shifts genres altogether.

The film’s decisions are baffling. Acting choices are questionable. Certain actors reappear in different roles mere scenes apart. The needle drops—Lana Del Rey’s “Cinnamon Girl,” Linda Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou”—are laugh-out-loud strange, often bearing only the most tenuous relationship to the scenes they accompany.

And yet, bewilderingly, all of it works in the film’s favor.

Feig knows exactly what he has: a deranged, lust-soaked throwback to the erotic thrillers of yesteryear, a cousin to the gloriously maniacal energy of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls. It’s shameless, trashy, and self-aware.

It is, without question, the most fun I’ve had at the movies in a long time.

There’s zero pretense here—no illusion that this is “elevated” or chasing prestige. That intention is crystallized early on when Nina gives Millie a tour of the house and points out Andrew’s home theater. Nina casually remarks that Andrew will inevitably be watching Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, just so he can tell someone new that it’s a “misunderstood masterpiece.”

Barry Lyndon, of course, was a critical dud upon release, only later reassessed as a classic—a film about a roguish Irish gambler who marries into wealth and attempts to assume aristocratic status, only to reveal himself as fundamentally rotten. The comparison isn’t subtle—and it isn’t accidental.

Much of the film’s praise has rightly centered on Seyfried’s performance as Nina, and it’s easy to see why. Seyfried, who has effortlessly bounced across genres for years, is operating on another level here, delivering a performance that is fearless, feral, and frequently astonishing.

Feig’s other ace comes in the form of Brandon Sklenar, who shouldered most of Taylor Sheridan’s profoundly dull 1923 on sheer physical charisma alone. Allowed to go fully off the rails here, Sklenar makes a convincing case for himself as more than just “romance novel eye candy,” shedding the lingering sheen of It Ends With Us.

Sweeney has received the bulk of the criticism, though it’s largely undeserved. Her Millie plays with a kind of wide-eyed obliviousness that makes sense when you consider the character’s arrested development—emotionally college-aged, stunted, and utterly unequipped to navigate a world this wealthy, predatory, and alien.

When the film finally kicks into twist-city overdrive, it becomes something else entirely—a runaway rollercoaster barreling toward a finale that will have you laughing, wincing, and ultimately thinking, wow, good for her.

The audacious sequel hook is the cherry on Feig’s cake. You can practically see him and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine kicking their feet and cackling as they set up the cinematic equivalent of a John Wick–style power fantasy for survivors of domestic violence and psychological abuse.

THE HOUSEMAID is now playing.