As someone who always sees a good movie trailer and decides to read the book before the movie comes out, I was extremely impressed by how this film came out. Typically, when I see a movie after reading the book, I immediately notice changes that ruin the movie. I immediately want to leave the theater and forget the movie even came out. The Housemaid is a psychological thriller about a girl with a secret past who takes on the only job she can get, a live-in housemaid, and discovers her employees also have secrets of their own. As she becomes trapped in an unsettling household, she realizes that privilege and wealth are not always what they seem. She falls into a dangerous world of trying to survive. Unfortunately, there is no way every single detail from the book can fit into a two-hour film, so let me tell you some things I wish you could have seen in the film.
Mille’s Internal Monologue
If you are someone who loves to read, you know you learn way more by simply reading the text of a book. You get insight into what is going on in the character’s mind. For starters, in the film, you can see that Millie, played by Sydney Sweeney is going through something that is impacting her life, but you can not hear what is going on in her mind. In the book, we live inside her head. We know exactly what she is thinking during any scenario, and that gives us a sense of how she will react to what comes next. In the movie, it is very unpredictable how she is going to go about something because we do not know her well.
For example, Millie goes to prison for killing a classmate for sexual assault. It was hard for her to find a job because of her record. She finally found a job where they did not bring up her record, and she believed that her employer, Nina Winchester, did not know. Throughout the book, you could tell she had this fear of being exposed, but in the movie, that fear was not as heightened. This was a major part of the book, along with her strategic thinking.
Because the movie was cut short, you could not see how Millie observed people around her. Nina’s behavior, in terms of how she reacted to certain things, was definitely unusual, and in the book, you get to read how Millie observed the patterns of strange behavior. When there was any conflict, Millie considered the long-term consequences of her actions, which we did not fully see in the movie.
What Happened to Enzo?
This is what absolutely destroyed me while watching the movie. In the book, Enzo was one of the main characters. He is the reason Nina got out of that crazy house in the first place. While we do see that in the movie, Enzo hardly had as much screentime as the readers thought he would.
For starters, Enzo is not just a helper or love interest that remains in the background. He is the emotional core of the storyline. His suspicions and faithfulness are what drive the story together by showing how protective and loving he is. He notices things that others are not aware of, and he is the only person who believes Nina when everyone in her life has let her down. His constant presence is what allows us as readers to emotionally hold on to someone when there is so much chaos.
The movie hardly shared his story of how he lost someone in a similar incident to that of Nina’s. I remember reading that and it truly pulling the story together. I personally believe that Enzo should have had a more of a role in the movie, just like in the book.
The Attic
If you have read or watched the movie, then you certainly know about the significance of this attic.
I believe the film did an excellent job with each scene done in there, bringing the book to life, but there were still a few things I would change. The first major thing I noticed about it, though, was the visuality of it. When I read the book, I imagined a dark room filled with storage and a cot bed. When Millie described what it looked like in the book, I always imagined it to be between a prison cell and a car. She said that it was much better than living out of her car, but not luxurious.
The attic in the movie looked like a room I would more than gladly sleep in, but maybe that’s just me. It did not give me the same visual I was hoping for when reading the book. Another thing that changed, which I was not expecting, was one of the tasks that needed to be done in order to escape the attic. For instance, instead of Andrew making Millie pile books on top of her, she was forced to cut into herself. I personally did not like this because it took away the whole idea of Andrew not wanting any of his women to change anything about their physical appearance. I felt like that was a major part of the book, but it was also not included in the film.
Lastly, the film changed how Andrew died. In the book, he died from starvation and dehydration in the attic, but in the movie, he was able to escape, and Millie had to physically kill him by pushing him over the stairwell. I wish they had kept the same as in the book, because they now had to come up with the excuse that he was changing a lightbulb, which I felt was unnecessary. In the book, she never had the intention of killing him, and through the text, you could read the fear that was in her mind of ever letting him out. In the movie, it made Millie seem like it was typical of her to kill someone because it showed how easy it was for her to push him off the railing, which is not the case.
Overall, besides these three major differences, I still believe the filmmakers did a great job bringing such a complex story to life. All of the major twists were shown incredibly well, and the tension between Millie, Andrew, and Nina showed how unsettling the Winchester home truly was. For a two-hour film, I believe they included so much of the book that I did not expect going into the theater. The casting was amazing, and each actor brought their character to life. Every book will always have more detail than the movie, but The Housemaid was done so well. The way Brandon Sklenar showed Andrew’s controlling personality, or how Amanda Seyfried’s acting convinced us Nina was actually insane, and how Sweeney allowed us to understand Millie’s distress, impressed me in many ways.