Sydney Sweeney can't clean Amanda Seyfried's mess in twisty The Housemaid trailer

Then again, Sweeney's character might have made the mess herself in the Paul Feig-directed thriller.

By Emma Keates | September 16, 2025 | 1:54pm

Photo: Daniel McFadden/Lionsgate

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Sydney Sweeney can't clean Amanda Seyfried's mess in twisty The Housemaid trailer

When Sabrina Carpenter sang about keeping someone locked up with only the ceiling fan for fresh air, she was kidding. Amanda Seyfried‘s character may not be. Carpenter’s “Please Please Please” soundtracks the new trailer for The Housemaid, which contains so many twists and turns in under three minutes that it almost feels like a full-fledged thriller itself. Sweeney stars in the Paul Feig film as Millie, a live-in housemaid hired by the wealthy Nina Winchester (Seyfried) and her husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar). Andrew, however, seems very surprised that Millie will be living under the same roof. Then Nina appears in the bathroom mirror behind Millie Insidious-style. Doors rattle and tea cups break. Nina screams… a lot. There’s a requisite creepy dollhouse, Millie stares meaningfully at a set of knives, and later she appears with blood smeared all over her forehead while holding a set of pliers. She also may be having an affair with Andrew, but that part is left pretty vague. Either way, there’s a lot going on here.

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Even though the trailer teases a lot of this back and forth, it seems like the film will have plenty of surprises in store. “What begins as a dream job quickly unravels into something far more dangerous—a sexy, seductive game of secrets, scandal, and power,” its synopsis reads, in part. “Behind the Winchesters’ closed doors lies a world of shocking twists that will leave you guessing until the very end.” There will also be some humor to go with all those screams. “Tension and scares and comedy are so wrapped together,” the Another Simple Favor director said of the film at CinemaCon, per The Hollywood Reporter. “It was a dream come true.”

The Housemaid is based on Freida McFadden’s 2022 novel of the same name, which spawned two sequels and also kept readers—including Sweeney herself—guessing until the very end. “I could not put it down,” she said during the same panel. “I ended up reading all three in one week… There’s characters that are flawed, and they are messy.”

The Housemaid premieres in theaters on December 19.