I Read the Book. I Watched the Movie. I Have Feelings About Both.

The Housemaid

Directed by Paul Feig · Based on the novel by Freida McFadden · 2025

Millie Calloway is trying to rebuild her life and lands a job as live-in housekeeper for the Winchester family. The family has secrets. Millie has secrets. The house has secrets. None of them line up the way anyone expects.

“Every woman in this house is hiding something. The question is who it’s going to cost.”

What It Actually Felt Like

I just finished the book and was excited to watch this. That was a mistake in the sense that the movie is going to feel like a diet version of something you just had in full. I left feeling indifferent, which is maybe the worst outcome for something with this cast and this source material.

The adaptation rushes through the character moments that made the book’s finale actually land. Those moments are where the emotional weight lives and without them the whole thing feels slick and hollow. You’re watching the shape of the story without the feeling inside it.

Amanda Seyfried is the exception to all of this. She commits to Nina in a way that the movie doesn’t really deserve and she is genuinely unhinged and fantastic in the second half. There is a version of this film that’s built around her specifically and I would have watched that movie. The second half is more fun than the first for exactly this reason.

The Honest Part

If you haven’t read the book you’ll probably enjoy this more than I did. It’s entertaining enough. It’s a fine adaptation that’s just missing the thing that made the book work.

Who This Is For

If you’re in the mood for something tense and twisty that you can turn your brain off for, this works. Read the book first if you want, just know the movie won’t fully deliver on it.

⭐⭐⭐  The book was better. The movie is still entertaining. Amanda Seyfried saved it.

Tags  psychological thriller, film, book adaptation, Amanda Seyfried, Sydney Sweeney, mood: uneven