*Spoiler Alert* 

I immediately bought the sequel after reading this book. Freida McFadden’s “The Housemaid” is absolutely worth reading. I kind of annoy myself with how often I talk about this book (and movie) to people, but I cannot shut up about it.

I went and saw “The Housemaid” in theaters completely blind to what it was about, and I think that is how this story needs to be consumed. I love whenever I see a movie, and I love it so much, and I discover that it originated as a book that I must read  immediately after I see the film. That is truly good storytelling.

“The Housemaid” is about a former convict trying to find a job and gets a housekeeping gig, but the wife of the household, Nina, is psychotic. Millie, the main character, tries to do the best performance that she can, but Nina always seemingly has a problem and is jealous of her and her relationship with her husband, Andrew Winchester. 

Andrew is a complete dirtbag and likes to lock Nina in the attic when she does something “punishable,” like washing the dishes the wrong way, or overcooking his steak. Those are not literal examples translated from the book, but those are things Andrew would definitely lock her up for. He literally gaslights everyone into thinking that Nina is the crazy one, but he is. So that is why Nina hires a maid to stay in the attic, so she will no longer be kept there.

The audience (and readers) do not know that Nina is not the crazy one until the major plot twist. I was thinking the whole time that Nina was going to end up killing Millie or vice versa.

Sydney Sweeney plays the main character, Millie, and does a phenomenal job. Maybe I would have gotten a different perspective if I read the book first and then the film. Regardless, Sweeney delivers. 

I noticed some differences while reading the book. For instance, Cecelia, the daughter, is allergic to peanut butter in the novel. This is such a minor detail and seems like a non-issue from an outsider’s perspective, but it says so much more. There is peanut butter in the cabinet, so Millie makes Cecelia a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If the girl was severely allergic, wouldn’t you think that peanut butter would not be in the household?

This is where I say it tells so much more. Andrew keeps peanut butter in the house in hopes that it will kill little Cecelia. This made Andrew so much crueler in my opinion. When I read that, I literally gasped. In the film, there is not much interaction or indication of how Cecelia and Andrew operate. The focus is primarily on the dynamic between Nina, Millie and Andrew. This detail had so much potential, and it was left untouched.

When we get down to the nitty-gritty part of the film, I prefer the way the movie plays out “the scene” rather than the book. “The scene” is Andrew being locked in the attic and Millie giving him his “punishment.” The way the punishments are played out is really different. In Nina’s perspective, when she is locked in the attic from months before, Andrew has her rip out 100 hairs with the follicle root intact because having hair is a “privilege.” In the book, it is the same. 

Millie’s punishment is, however, different. In the novel, she is supposed to balance these heavy books onto her stomach for three hours, but in the film, Millie has to cut her stomach 21 times with broken shards of glass from a Winchester heirloom plate. Millie had dropped the plate and broken it, so he made her cut herself with the pieces. Obviously, this made a more entertaining, or graphic, watch, and I think that is why they took this angle. 

When it comes to Andrew’s punishment, this is also a more entertaining watch. I did not necessarily care for him balancing books on his groin in the novel. I preferred the bloody graphic scene of him pulling his tooth out (which also happened in the book). 

I loved the way the film played out that Andrew vs. Millie scene. Nina has a guilty conscience about plotting Millie and Andrew, and returns to the house to help Millie after Nina and Andrew broke up. Nina thinks that Millie is being held prisoner in the attic, so she unlocks the door to the attic (which  really has Andrew in there). This is where the differences are MAJOR. Andrew dies from “falling” down the stairs, but in the book, he dies from dehydration in the attic.

As an audience member, my heart was palpitating when Nina unlocked that door, and Andrew was not dead. The fear of knowing his capability and what he would do to Millie and Nina was so much heavier. I was disappointed when I read this scene in the book. He was dead and helpless — less plot in my eyes. 

It sounds like I prefer the movie over the film, but there is one major aspect that the book carried, and the film dropped: Enzo. Enzo is the garden keeper and essentially keeps an eye on Nina because he knows the truth behind the walls. Nina turns to him, and he helps her escape. They form a whole plan together; she goes to his apartment and even sleeps with him. All of that is absent in the movie, and I hate it.

If they had put that in the movie, I think most of the audience would have focused  more on the affair and less on the abuse portion, so in the directors edit, this was adequate. Although, there are ways to get that idea without focusing on the “affair,” because the book nailed it. Nina just happened to sleep with Enzo, but felt weird afterward and was not looking for anything despite her abusive marriage. Her character was more focused on fleeing rather than finding someone. That balance was well done in the book and could have been interpreted into the movie.

I am going to read the sequel because I need to know what happens next with Millie. That is how I know I am hooked, and “The Housemaid” will have definitely put its claws in you.

[MS1]AP style apparently does not permit ex-convict

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