Starring Amanda Seyfried, Sydney Sweeney, Brandon Sklenar

Directed by Paul Feig

Lionsgate – in cinemas now

A struggling young woman lies about her past to get a job as a housemaid for a wealthy couple, who have dark secrets of their own.

Every now and again a movie comes along which is clearly a daft, trashy load of old cobblers but there’s something about it that just wins you over – or perhaps it’s down to a surfeit of mince pies and all that Bailey’s Irish Cream swooshing my critical faculties down a jolly U-bend of Christmas goodwill.

Assuming you’ve seen a psychological thriller before (especially of the late 20th century variety, such as Fatal Attraction or The Hand That Rocks the Cradle or Presumed Innocent) then the working parts of Paul Feig’s The Housemaid will be as obvious as the neatly ticking cogs of a carriage clock in a glass case.

Millie (Sydney Sweeney) is a college graduate who has decided her vocation in life is working as a housemaid for wealthy families… or is she? Nina Winchester is her over-the-top psychotic employer… or is she? Andrew is Nina’s charming and long suffering husband… or is he? Enzo is the dodgy Italian groundskeeper… or is he?

I counted at least six major twists and character switchbacks, proving counterintuitively that the more twists a movie has, the more obvious and predictable they become, and the more ridiculously melodramatic the creatives have to be to pull them off – to the extent that it’s hard to know whether we are supposed to be laughing out loud at the movie’s supposed ‘Aha!’ moments or not. Other causes of hilarity (aside from Amanda Seyfried’s turned-up-to-eleven performance) are the toe curling sex scenes, so ridiculously staged they make Team America’s puppet humping seem as naturalistic as Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland getting it on in Don’t Look Now.

To be fair, there is one twist that is so left field and implausible, even I didn’t see it coming, but that only added to the fun.

And then, in its final act, The Housemaid turns to a healthy dollop of good old fashioned torture horror, which, to Feig’s credit, he pulls off rather successfully, to the point where I was peeping through my fingers at the screen.

At 131 minutes, The Housemaid is way too long, although if they could have come up with some more twists I’m sure Mr Feig could have squeezed another hour out of it.

Verdict: The Housemaid is a great big stupid Christmas Dinner of a movie, full of ridiculous stodge you would never normally eat, but which knocks you into submission and leaves you feeling strangely content with the world. File under ‘Guilty Pleasure’. 6/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com