Behind Closed Doors: Control, Class And Collapse In 'The Housemaid'
- Jennifer Hensey
- 1 minute ago
- 5 min read
From the moment we enter the pristine white interiors of the Winchesters’ home in The Housemaid, we are suffocated by perfection, or rather the façade of it. From glistening snow and immaculately polished surfaces to Nina Winchester’s golden curls and pearled femininity, the motif of faultless white becomes inescapable, creating an immediate and unnerving pressure for coherence and excellence. The house itself is quickly personified through slow crane-like establishing shots that reduce Nina and Millie (played by Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney) to small figures engulfed by its vast interior. Rooms are framed with a clinical precision that borders on the uncanny, with their watchful angles crafting a vision of polished femininity expected of the women who inhabit them. Andrew’s obsessive attention to detail – not only in designing the domestic space but in constructing a miniature replica of it – becomes deeply unsettling, positioning spectators as children peering into a dollhouse and rendering the women within it orchestrated, arranged and controlled. The signs of his violence are present from the outset; we are simply as oblivious as Nina’s world is to Andrew’s true nature, primed instead to distrust her before we even meet him. But beneath this immaculate surface lies a story of control, surveillance and inherited abuse, most compelling when it lingers in psychological tension rather than spectacle. Though the film’s slow, symbolically rich build-up is undeniably gripping, its tonal shifts and exaggerated resolution ultimately dilute the piercing social critique it so carefully sharpens, falling slightly flat beneath moments of misplaced humour.
Zooming in on the hidden symbolisms and motifs threaded throughout the narrative, these signs feel almost like a cry for help from the house itself, attempting to expose Andrew through a coded cinematic language shared with the audience. As already suggested, the motif of flawless white extends far beyond the opening: Andrew’s polished teeth and stark white tank top – an ironic nod to the “wife-beater” – which later becomes blood-stained, visualising the corruption of sterile innocence by brutality. Nina’s pale wardrobe is gradually projected onto Millie, marking both the curated ideal of feminine purity and the disposable nature of Andrew’s wives as Millie assumes the role of doll-like replacement. Meanwhile, the walls crowded with art, from the Mona Lisa to static portraits of Cecelia performing ballet despite her lack of talent, signal Andrew’s obsession with shaping public perception, curating his family as though they were possessions. When Nina’s mask of domestic fulfilment begins to slip, deliberately staged through frizzy hair and inconsistent makeup, she ceases to function as a valuable object of display. Stripped of aesthetic pleasure, she is abandoned, precisely as she intends. These visual cues ultimately reveal how Andrew transforms the domestic interior into a site of gendered control, possession and perfection.
The film’s visual language gradually opens onto a broader social commentary on surveillance, class and the persistent mistrust of women, particularly those from working-class backgrounds. Despite Nina’s polite exchanges with her upper-middle-class circle of supposed friends, whispered judgements render her the subject of rumour, scrutiny and suspicion, targeting her appearance, psychological state and financial insecurity while elevating Andrew as a saint-like saviour who seemingly rescued her. In reality, he has only trapped her. These dynamics of coercion and manipulation reveal how class stigma casts a shadow that women cannot escape, positioning vulnerability itself as something to be exploited. The film also implicates our own complicity as we, too, are primed to distrust Nina, echoing a wider cultural tendency to doubt victims who are silenced by the fear of being accused of lying. Gossip among the women further exposes the superficiality of this social world, where performative friendship coexists with captivation toward Andrew’s charm and sexual allure, demonstrating how easily male charisma can distort moral judgement. The moment Andrew roars, “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE,” however, fractures this illusion entirely when visceral feminine intuition kicks in for female spectators. From that point, the parallels between Nina and Millie – mirrored dinners, identical gestures of possession, the repeated image of Andrew carrying their bodies through the house – crystallise into a pattern of predation. Yet it is precisely this underestimation of women, particularly Millie, that leads to Andrew’s fatal undoing, suggesting that struggle does not equate with weakness.
An especially striking detail emerges in the film’s casting, particularly in Brandon Sklenar’s portrayal of Andrew Winchester. In his previous screen appearance, Sklenar played Atlas, the protective love interest in the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, a character defined by his gentle support in helping the female protagonist escape domestic abuse. His transformation here, from saviour of abuse to a perpetrator of it, creates a pointed intertextual irony that unsettles audience expectations. Whether this lineage was a deliberate strategy to manipulate viewers’ sense of trust in Sklenar’s familiar presence, or simply the result of Blake Lively’s reportedly recommended to director Paul Feig, the effect remains the same: safety is revealed as performative, and protection as illusion.
Despite the visual precision of each scene and the strength of its psychological build-up, the film’s resolution feels markedly far-fetched – and at times even camp – colliding awkwardly with the atmosphere of discomfort so carefully established in the opening half. Scattered moments of ambiguous humour emerge toward the ending, producing sharply divided audience responses across screenings. For some, the dark, out-of-pocket satire heightens tension through nervous, collective laughter rather than offering relief; for others, it registers as misplaced and tonally confusing. While satire can effectively expose bourgeois hypocrisy, here it arrives too suddenly, dulling the force of the film’s social critique and leaving its final impact overshadowed by cheap gags. Viewers have also noted a sense of narrative compression when compared with Freida McFadden’s novel, including the reduced significance of Enzo’s role in persuading Nina to help Millie and the alteration of the story’s more disturbing punishments. Reception to the performances has been similarly divided: Sydney Sweeney’s restrained portrayal has been criticised for failing to capture Millie’s volatility, while Amanda Seyfried has drawn consistent praise. Ultimately, the ending undermines the sophistication that the film’s first half meticulously constructs, weakening both the tension and the emotional weight of its revelations about sexual abuse and the societal hostility faced by victims.
The Housemaid draws to a gripping close through further twists and revelations that foreground the inheritance of abuse alongside acts of female resistance. At Andrew’s funeral – where the film’s pervasive motif of white is symbolically extinguished by the overwhelming darkness of black mourning dress – a brief exchange between Nina and Andrew’s mother unveils the origins of his corruption. Her repetition of Andrew’s belief that physical beauty is a “privilege” to be preserved reveals a cycle in which victimhood mutates into domination, suggesting that domestic horror is systematic and reproduced rather than innate. Power, perfection and control are not born but passed down. The final image of Millie applying for another housemaid position, this time before a visibly bruised woman, reframes her not simply as a survivor but as a quiet avenger, determined to disrupt the pattern. Musical choices further shape this unsettling empowerment: the unexpected inclusion of Lana Del Rey’s Cinnamon Girl lends the film a fragile intimacy, while Taylor Swift’s I Did Something Bad propels its closing moments into dark, thrilling defiance. The Housemaid, then, remains visually and psychologically compelling – marked by an attention to detail worthy of Andrew himself – yet its uneven tone ultimately prevents it from fully realising the disturbing social critique simmering beneath its immaculate white surface.
Edited by Lara Walsh, Co-Film & TV Editor
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