The Housemaid won’t impress on any creative, narrative, or visual level, but it’s easily digestible campy entertainment best watched with friends on a weekend.

The nicest thing I can say is I get what they’re trying to do with The Housemaid.

I did not not enjoy this movie, there are plenty of moments that rank decently on my ‘campy entertainment’ scale. But for all the fun promised by the premise of this adaptation of Freida McFadden’s 2022 novel, director Paul Feig takes a very workmanlike approach to the movie.

Millie (Sydney Sweeney) is a troubled young woman with a mysterious past who gets a job being a housemaid for a hot wealthy couple, Nina and Andrew Winchester (Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar). Said couple harbour some dark secrets, especially Nina. Sexy stuff, dramatic twists, and wicked reveals ensue. If this sounds familiar, well, that’s because there’s nothing in The Housemaid you haven’t seen before. I would dive deeper into the plot, but you can basically predict what will unfold within the first five minutes, so it’s a wasted exercise.

One thinks that there was potential for Feig to do an interesting plotty Park Chan-wook movie with the material, but somewhere along the way he forgot to have some much-needed fun while doing it. Instead of meticulous planning and scene construction, one could almost imagine Feig approaching every page of the script with an air of “eh, that’ll do.” Considering he has given us some modern crowd-pleasing classics, like Bridesmaids, Spy, and Freaks and Geeks, this is all disappointingly basic from a director who has shown he can do some amazingly enjoyable things when given the right material. Throw in the fact that he’s done something very similar before with A Simple Favour, it’s clear he can make something fun in this kind of genre, so having The Housemaid be so meh is decidedly disappointing.

The actual filmmaking is equally as basic as the stock thriller/horror tropes Feig employs. Basic establishing shots set to some thematically appropriate needle drops. Quick sweeps to reveal a sudden character appearance. Dramatic voiceovers that hold our hands throughout because the movie is almost too self-conscious to trust that we can keep up with what’s going on. Close-ups on important items and characters’ faces to tell us what we’re supposed to feel or know. I struggle to pick out any scenes that had anything notable to look at, or even just an interesting prop in the background to pique my interest. Nothing is awful, nor is anything outstanding. It’s all lands somewhere in the region of ‘boring’ to ‘serviceable’.

When the filmmaking is off-the-shelf in quality, there’s a greater reliance on the actors to really sell what the movie is trying to put down. That’s where the chasm between potential and execution grows even larger.

Sydney Sweeney is a, how should I put this, fascinating actress to watch on screen, for better and worse. Whenever the needle is not required to move beyond the middle – like Anyone But You and The White Lotus – her default monotonous, deadpan delivery of every line combined with small variations of the same judgemental look puts me to sleep. But when Sweeney’s forced to get well out of her default mode, she can be compelling. That’s why her portrayal of Cassie in Euphoria works so well: Sweeney losing her marbles is fun.

But for a movie like The Housemaid where middle-of-the-road is all that’s required, Sweeney comes off drier than the deserts of Bahrain. Even during moments when losing her mind is expected, she never really gets there. When the lead looks utterly bored or comes off as not wanting to be in the movie – both as the character and in real life – you’ve got a real problem.

Thank the acting gods that we got Amanda Seyfried to balance out Sweeney’s utter disinterest because she knows exactly what the assignment is. Need a touch of nice, maybe too nice? Done. Over-the-top jealous and hysterical? Tick. Borderline psychotic but with something more beneath the surface? Easy. In fact, so easy she makes me forget the utter disregard of common sense and logic throughout this movie. Her poor shoulders must be sore from having to carry this movie by herself.

For all the many nitpicks I have about The Housemaid, this is exactly the type of movie Feig was aiming to make. Unlike, say, Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights, which is campy fun but suffers greatly because it thinks it’s more highbrow than it actually is, Feig isn’t reaching for something profound with this movie. Sinners or One Battle After Another, this is not.

Taking that level of self-awareness into account, my opinion about this movie matters very little. When you watch The Housemaid in a crowded cinema or with a group of friends, those workmanlike sequences where you want to yell at the screen when a character does something inexplicably dumb or illogical become way more fun.

That’s why The Housemaid ultimately works despite its many flaws – and the surprise box office success is a testament to that. When a decidedly mediocre movie is able to get away with all its shortcomings through sheer vibes while everyone involved is half-assing it (with the exception of Amanda Seyfried, whose performance elevates this by an entire star), well, there’s no arguing against that.