The Housemaid (2025): Sydney Sweeney’s Stairway to Disaster – Feig’s Mansion Mayhem That Should’ve Stayed in the Book.

Right, let’s talk about this glossy nonsense called The Housemaid, the 2025 Paul Feig flick that’s hoovered up nearly $400 million by letting audiences gawp at pretty people turning a Long Island mansion into a human abattoir. It’s based on some airport potboiler by Freida McFadden, and Feig – the man behind Bridesmaids – has somehow turned it into a two-hour advert for why you should never, ever hire help when your wife’s got a track record of trying to drown the kids.

Plot: Hoovering Up Trouble

Millie (Sydney Sweeney, looking like she’s auditioning for a detergent commercial) is fresh out on parole for offing a rapist back in the day – fair play, says I – and bags a live-in maid gig with lawyer Andrew (Brandon Sklenar, built like a garden shed) and his nutcase wife Nina (Amanda Seyfried, eyes like saucers on springs). The attic door locks from the outside. Red flag? Nah, she signs anyway, because plot.

Cue locked rooms, dodgy texts, a sweaty Italian gardener who looks like he’s smuggling olives in his trousers, swimming pool “mishaps”, and a chandelier that picks the wrong moment to re-enact Phantom of the Opera. By the end, there’s a funeral, a fat cheque, and Millie’s off to her next disaster like it’s a career choice. It’s less thriller, more game of domestic Cluedo where everyone’s the murderer and the mansion’s the weapon.

Cast: Glossy but Gutless

Sweeney does the wide-eyed-to-ruthless switch like she’s flipping a light bulb – convincing enough if you ignore the script yelling “victim trope!” every five minutes. Seyfried’s Nina is a walking lithium advert: posh one second, feral the next, like a labradoodle that’s discovered gin. Sklenar’s Andrew is your bog-standard tall lawyer bloke who thinks charm excuses everything, and the gardener (Michele Morrone) lurks about adding precisely zero plot but maximum eyebrows.

Direction: Feig Fumbles the Fix

Feig shoots the whole thing like he’s selling timeshares: endless glass walls, infinity pools begging for a body, and staircases so vast you could land a Spitfire on them. It’s all very glossy, like a car showroom crossed with a crime scene – but the twists? About as surprising as rain in Wales. Feig knows comedy, but here he’s directing a mansion like it’s the third stooge – every corner’s primed for pratfalls, every door for a dramatic slam.

Verdict: Skip the Mansion, Watch the Paint Dry

This is the sort of film that makes you wonder why Hollywood bothers with books when they could just film a PowerPoint of bad decisions. Fun for an hour on a plane if you’ve run out of battery on your phone, but don’t expect to remember it by the credits. Rent a decent hoover instead – at least that won’t try to kill you. Out now on digital after a box-office smash.