The Housemaid (2025)

The Housemaid is a 2025 American erotic psychological thriller film directed by Paul Feig and written by Rebecca Sonnenshine. It is based on the 2022 novel by Freida McFadden, and stars Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried. In the film, Millie Calloway, a young woman with a troubled past, becomes the live-in maid for a wealthy family whose household hides dark secrets.

The Housemaid premiered at the Axa Equitable Center in New York City on December 2, 2025, and was released in the United States by Lionsgate on December 19. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $400.5 million on a budget of $35 million. A sequel is in development, with Feig and Sweeney set to return and scheduled for release on December 17, 2027.

Plot

Recently paroled Millie Calloway is hired by Nina Winchester as a live-in maid in a Great Neck, Long Island mansion, with Nina's wealthy husband Andrew and daughter Cece. She is given an attic bedroom with a sealed window and a door with an outside lock. Nina is supposedly hiring because she is pregnant and needs help around the house. As a parolee, Millie must maintain lawful employment.

One morning, Nina accuses Millie of throwing away her meeting notes. Andrew intervenes, reassuring Nina she has time to rework them. One night, Nina finds Andrew watching Family Feud with Millie; though innocuous, she threatens to fire her, warning her away from him. Millie grows increasingly concerned about Nina's mood swings and violent outbursts, and begins looking for other employment opportunities. Millie hears Nina's parents died suspiciously in a house fire, cannot have more children due to premature ovarian insufficiency, takes antipsychotics, and was institutionalized for trying to drown Cece and attempting suicide by overdose.

Nina instructs Millie to book Broadway musical tickets and a hotel for the Winchesters, later denying it, as the schedule overlaps with Cece's ballet camp. While Nina takes her to camp, Andrew and Millie secretly attend the show, enjoy dinner together, and check into the hotel. Receiving many seething texts from Nina, Andrew comforts Millie, they have sex and return home.

Nina tells Millie she knows about her ten years in prison, confronts them about their affair and threatens Millie. Andrew defends Millie, demanding Nina leave. The two continue their romance, while Nina, after initially being visibly upset, appears relieved and happy to be separated from Andrew.

Millie unknowingly serves Andrew breakfast on an heirloom china plate from his controlling mother, but seeing the groundskeeper Enzo outside frightens her so she accidentally smashes it. Andrew fires Enzo, telling Millie to pick up the pieces. That night, he brings her to the attic room, drugs her, and locks her inside. When Millie wakes up, she demands to be freed, but Andrew refuses.

Nina writes Cece a letter for when she is grown, explaining she did not cause her parents' deaths. As a college student, a married law professor empregnated her, and she fell for Andrew while raising Cece as a single mother. Early on, Andrew requested Nina dye her brunette locks blonde.

When Nina missed an appointment to cover her roots, Andrew locked her in the attic room until she pulled out one hundred hairs from her scalp, including the follicles. He forced her to do it again after claiming one strand was missing a follicle. Andrew then drugged her, framed her for attempting to drown Cece and drugging herself, and continued to torment her with confinement in the psychiatric hospital and the attic. Refusing to get pregnant with Andrew's child, Nina secretly had an IUD inserted, feigning premature ovarian insufficiency as the excuse for why she struggled to get pregnant.

Enzo, conscious of the situation, tried unsuccessfully to help Nina and Cece escape Andrew's abuse. Finally, she hired Millie, hoping Andrew would leave her. She is exactly Andrew's type: young, pretty, lonely and troubled.

As punishment for breaking the china, Andrew gives Millie a shard, demanding she cut her stomach once for each of the plate's 21 pieces. Once finished, Millie falls asleep. When Andrew enters the room, she stabs him with a knife Nina provided, then locks him inside. Millie orders Andrew to pull out one of his front teeth with pliers.

To force Andrew to comply, Millie breaks more of his mother's china and threatens to burn the attic. She reveals her 10-year incarceration was for beating her best friend's rapist to death. When Nina picks up Cece from camp, Cece suggests she save Millie.

Nina sneaks into the attic, believing Millie is still inside. Andrew attacks both women, but Millie escapes. He tries to convince Nina to take him back, but she refuses. He then tries to kill her, but Millie returns and pushes him into the stairwell, killing him. Nina drops a lightbulb as if Andrew fell while trying to install it. Telling Millie to run away, she calls Enzo to help clean up the scene.

Policewoman Jessica Connors finds the evidence and Nina's statement unconvincing. However, her sister was traumatised when once engaged to Andrew, so reports his death as a freak accident. After Andrew's funeral, Nina gives Millie $100,000, then leaves with Cece to start over in California. Nina recommends Millie's services to her friend Lisa, who implies that her husband is abusive. Millie happily accepts the job.

Cast

Production

Paul Feig directed The Housemaid and produced it with Todd Lieberman and Laura Fischer for Hidden Pictures, using a screenplay by Rebecca Sonnenshine adapting the 2022 novel by Freida McFadden. In October 2024, Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried came on board as leading actresses and executive producers alongside McFadden and Alex Young. Seyfried was not aware she was credited as an executive producer until three weeks into production; she claimed that this credit was a “vanity credit" negotiated by her agent and clarified that she "didn't do shit to make that movie. I only acted." Brandon Sklenar joined the cast that month followed by Michele Morrone in December 2024. Elizabeth Perkins was also cast in the film. Media Capital Technologies co-financed the film.

Principal photography began on January 3, 2025, in New Jersey, and wrapped in March 2025.

Theodore Shapiro composed the film's score, marking his eighth collaboration with Feig.

Commercial songs that were featured in the film, but not included in the soundtrack albums:

"Take Me as I Am" – Lyn Lapid

"Tumbling Dice" – Linda Ronstadt

"Why Is She Still Here?" – Reneé Rapp

"Cinnamon Girl" – Lana Del Rey

"To the Sky" – Clare and Oliver Manchon

"La Ballade" – Clare and Oliver Manchon, Aaron Goldberg, Larry Grenadier, Loston Harris and Matt Munisteri

"Bad as the Rest" – Jessie Murph

"Breaking News" – Flowerovlove

"Since U Been Gone" – Kelly Clarkson

"Blue Bayou" – Linda Ronstadt

"German Dance No. 1 in C Major" – from Barry Lyndon

"I Did Something Bad" – Taylor Swift

"The Angel and the Saint" – Goldie Boutilier

Release

The Housemaid premiered at the Axa Equitable Center on December 2, 2025, and was released in the United States on December 19, 2025. The film was released on VOD on February 3, 2026, and on DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray on March 17, 2026.

Reception

Box office

The Housemaid grossed $126.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $274.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $400.5 million.

In the United States and Canada, The Housemaid was released alongside Avatar: Fire and Ash, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, and David, and was projected to gross $20–25 million from 3,015 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $8 million on its first day, including $2.3 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $19 million, finishing in third behind Fire and Ash and David. It held well in its second weekend, dropping just 19.5% to $15.3 million and finishing in fourth. The film made $15.1 million, $10.1 million, and $8.5 million in its third, fourth, and fifth weekends.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 74% of 201 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "A sly throwback to the lurid thrillers that used to dominate multiplexes, The Housemaid cleans up nicely thanks to its wicked sense of fun and a delightfully unnerving performance from Amanda Seyfried." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 65 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed by PostTrak gave it an 84% overall positive score, with 63% saying they would definitely recommend the film.

TheWrap's William Bibbiani gave the film a positive review and wrote, "The Housemaid has its twists, and you'll probably see some of them coming a mile off, even if you don't know exactly how the secrets will be revealed or what form the danger will take. On more than one occasion, the twist is that The Housemaid is even weirder and funnier than you expect — and that's a welcome surprise." Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph gave a four stars rating out of five for the film, stating, "This is a full-tilt throwback to 'erotic thriller' tropes from the 1990s." Kyle Smith of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "The Housemaid is a delightful hall of mirrors in which reality turns out to be subject to infinite modification." Marta Medina del Valle of El Confidencial rated the "post-postmodern artifact" 4 out of 5 stars, declaring it the "best worst movie" of recent times.

In a negative review for Slant Magazine, Anzhe Zhang wrote, "The Housemaid's twist is a doozy, but it falls just short of being a deconstruction of tradwife values."

Accolades

Sequel

In January 2026, Lionsgate announced that a sequel had been greenlit, with Feig, Sweeney and Morrone returning. The sequel is set to be an adaptation of The Housemaid's Secret, the second book in The Housemaid series by Freida McFadden.

In March 2026, Lionsgate Studios announced that the sequel will be released on December 17, 2027, with Kirsten Dunst added to the cast. In June 2026, Paul Anthony Kelly joined the cast.

Notes

References

External links

The Housemaid at IMDb