Sydney Sweeney came in and swooned the MAGA coalition with unapologetic involvement in the now-infamous American Eagle Good Jeans ads. And when she doubled down on her choice to say nothing about the backlash from the left coalition, she instantly became a meme. None of that meant, however, that she was MAGA’s sweetheart. She's the farthest thing from it and The Housemaid felt like her atonement to the liberal entertainment industry.
The film – an adaptation of the book – wastes no time making clear what kind of story it wants to tell. Not a psychologically honest one. Not a morally serious one. But a very familiar ideological one. The Housemaid is less interested in truth than it is in sorting characters into moral bins that just so happen to align perfectly with modern feminist dogma. Women, no matter what they do, are framed as victims navigating an unjust world. Men, especially wealthy, white, and powerful ones, are framed as inherent threats whose removal feels less like tragedy and more like restoration.
Sweeney’s character, Millie Calloway, is the clearest example. We’re asked to root for her without reservation, despite the fact that she served prison time for killing someone. The circumstances are emotionally charged, yes, but the film treats homicide as a background detail rather than a defining moral rupture. It’s something that happened to her, not something she did. Reflection is minimal. Accountability is absent. The audience is instructed to move on quickly, because dwelling on it would complicate the narrative and, God forbid, taint the woman as morally bankrupt.
That same selective amnesia applies everywhere else. She knowingly sleeps with her married boss, Andrew Winchester (Brandon Sklenar), after being explicitly warned by his wife, Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), to stay away. No reckoning there either. It’s reframed as vulnerability, longing, chemistry – even justified. Nina’s own past is similarly laundered. An affair with her college professor. A pregnancy. Abandoned ambitions. Every decision is contextualized until responsibility evaporates entirely. Even the choice to keep her child out of wedlock is framed as a miserable existence she needs rescuing from – further pushing the narrative that abortion would have been the smarter, cleaner option, lest you end up tethered to a psycho for life.
One detail the film largely skips over is Andrew’s mother. In just a couple of scenes, we’re clearly meant to understand that her behavior shaped his need for control. The implication is obvious and heavy-handed. Yet that explanation is never treated as mitigating or humanizing. It exists solely to confirm his guilt, not to complicate it. Andrew’s background isn’t explored to understand him; it’s used to seal his fate.
What makes this omission glaring is the contrast with Millie. Her time in prison, which would realistically leave profound psychological scars, is barely addressed at all. Her violence is contextualized, her moral failures softened, and her past ultimately forgiven. Andrew receives none of that grace. Trauma excuses the women and condemns the man. Forgiveness flows in one direction only.
This is where the film’s feminist thesis becomes impossible to ignore. The most revealing dynamic isn’t the affair or even the violence, but the arrangement itself: women hiring women to infiltrate households, seduce husbands, destabilize families, and set men up for removal. The film has earned over $75 million as women flock to the cinema to see their own man-hating fantasies played out on the big screen. It goes without saying that if the genders were reversed in this film, and the men were the traumatized killers, they would be clearly portrayed as villains, not heroes.
The Housemaid reduces men to disposable villains and elevates women to moral heroes regardless of their behavior. It’s an exhausting narrative that corrupts rather than enlightens. I watched the movie so you wouldn’t have to. You’re welcome.
Soad Tabrizi is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a private practice based in Orange County, CA (www.soadtabrizi.com). Soad is also the founder of www.ConservativeCounselors.com.
