5 Best Movies Like The Housemaid

At the end of 2025, Paul Feig's movie "The Housemaid" — which earned a solid review right here at Looper — took the box office by storm, thanks to Feig's cunning, campy direction and lead performances from Amanda Seyfried, Sydney Sweeney, and Brandon Sklenar. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Freida McFadden, "The Housemaid" introduces audiences to Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney), a tough young woman who's fresh out of prison, living in her car, and desperate for a job. When she manages to get a job as a housemaid for the wealthy, beautiful couple Nina and Andrew Winchester (Seyfried and Sklenar), it seems like Millie's fortunes have completely changed, especially because she's allowed to live in the attic room at the Winchester mansion.

Before long, though, things take a sinister turn. Nina starts blaming Millie for mistakes she didn't commit and having meltdowns, leaving Andrew to apologize in her stead and play middleman between them. (Seyfried, it should be said, is magnificent as Nina, especially when the movie's big twist is finally revealed and her behavior makes shockingly perfect sense.) Before long, there's a spark between Andrew and Millie, but the truth about Andrew and Nina's marriage leads to a truly horrifying reveal ... and puts Millie in unexpected peril.

So what should you watch next if you absolutely loved "The Housemaid?" Feig is an absolute master of campy, heightened drama — and one of his other films is on this list for precisely that reason — but there are other female-driven, wonderfully over-the-top dramas you should check out if you're a fan of this film. Here are five movies you absolutely must watch once credits roll on "The Housemaid."

Put simply, "A Simple Favor" walked so "The Housemaid" could run. Another Paul Feig-led adaptation based on a buzzy best-seller, this dark 2018 comedy is adapted from Darcey Bell's 2017 novel of the same name and presents an intriguing mystery: what happened to the beautiful, glamorous, and successful working mom Emily Nelson (Blake Lively, having the time of her life)?

"A Simple Favor" opens with a clip of Anna Kendrick's "mommy blogger" Stephanie Smothers making a video begging for news about the woman she refers to as her best friend, and from there, we learn how this unlikely duo got so close. With sons at the same school, Stephanie and Emily, who couldn't possibly be more different, bond over endless batches of martinis and even spill secrets ... or, at least, Stephanie does. (The fully invented word that Emily utters after hearing about Stephanie's illicit and horrifying tryst with her half-brother cannot be reprinted here, point in fact.) One day, Emily asks Stephanie to pick up her son from school as a favor, but while Stephanie takes care of the young boy, Emily just ... vanishes. From there, Stephanie has to solve the mystery of what happened to Emily, even as she finds herself in a surprising romantic entanglement with Emily's novelist husband Sean Townsend (Henry Golding).

"A Simple Favor" is dishy, campy, delightful, and its twist is wild enough to even rival the one found in "The Housemaid." Plus, we cannot stress this enough: Lively is having a fantastic time playing Emily, and it shows, especially in all of her one-on-one scenes with Kendrick. You can skip the lesser 2025 sequel, but if you love "The Housemaid," you absolutely cannot miss "A Simple Favor."

Another phenomenal literary adaptation, "Gone Girl" paved the way for books like "The Housemaid," and we're all better for it. Adapted from Gillian Flynn's masterful novel of the same name, David Fincher's 2014 take on "Gone Girl" opens as Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), spending the morning at the bar he co-owns with his sister Margo (Carrie Coon), gets a call from his neighbor saying there seems to be a disturbance of some kind at his home in North Carthage, Missouri. When Nick heads home, he finds the house in disarray and his wife Amy Elliott Dunne (Rosamund Pike) missing ... on the day of their fifth wedding anniversary. 

Obviously, Nick becomes a suspect in his wife's disappearance right away, leading to a media circus in his small Missouri town — and as he tries to prove his innocence by tracking down Amy somehow, we see their courtship play out in flashback through diary entries written by Amy herself. "Gone Girl" is twisted, sick, and depraved — all of which are meant in a good way, in this context — and if you somehow avoided any spoilers about this story's twist for this long, we certainly won't ruin the shocking turn of "Gone Girl" here. If that is the case, though, what are you waiting for?! You probably shouldn't watch "Gone Girl" with a romantic partner, but you should watch "Gone Girl" if you haven't seen it before. Once you see that twist unfold, you'll never, ever be able to forget it.

Campy erotic thrillers feel like a thing of the past — though it seems like Paul Feig is intent on changing that — but if you want to see a movie that helped pave the way for something like "The Housemaid," you absolutely must watch "Fatal Attraction." Directed by Adrian Lyne and written by James Dearden (the latter of whom based the story on his short film "Diversion"), this 1987 classic focuses on successful attorney and ostensible family man Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas), who carelessly has a brief affair with one of his coworkers Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) while his wife Beth (Anne Archer) is out of town with their children. This is no simple affair, though; as Dan soon realizes, Alex is erratic at best and sociopathic at worst, and she has absolutely no intention of letting him go back to his family and break things off with her.

"I won't be ignored, Dan," Alex famously purrs at her lover as he desperately tries to cast her off — and the tactics she uses to hold on to him range from vicious to outright horrific. (Boiled bunny, anyone?!) When Alex tells Dan that she's pregnant with his child, things only intensify more and more, leading to a final showdown between Alex, Dan, and Beth that has to be seen to be believed. "Fatal Attraction" is one of a handful of movies from the 1980s that made Close into a Hollywood A-lister, and if you've somehow never seen this absolutely thrilling classic, buckle up. You're in for an absolutely wild ride from start to finish — if you thought "The Housemaid" was wild, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Very loosely adapted from the novel "Fingersmith" by Sarah Waters, Park Chan-wook's 2016 film "The Handmaiden" is a searing and even terrifying story about a young woman who joins a household as a servant ... only for horrors to unfold once she takes the job. In this story, we're introduced to a conman who styles himself as Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) who, in 1930s Korea (which is occupied by Japan at the time), decides he wants to marry a rich heiress named Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee). In order to do this, the Count enlists the help of a young woman named Nam Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) and convinces her to pose as Lady Hideko's handmaid to gain her trust and convince her to wed the Count so that he can commit her to a mental institution and steal her vast fortune.

We simply cannot spoil every single twist and turn in "The Handmaiden" here, but there are a ton — and honestly, this is a movie where you'll absolutely want to check trigger warnings before you queue it up. Still, if you're up for watching "The Handmaiden," it's a truly masterful work from Park, one of South Korea's finest directors ... and the performances from Ha Jung-woo, Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, and Cho Jin-woong as Lady Hideko's utterly depraved uncle Kouzuki are gripping, fascinating, and even heartbreaking. "The Handmaiden" is significantly darker than "The Housemaid," but the two movies go together perfectly in a wonderfully messed-up way.

Bong Joon Ho has been an acclaimed director in his home country of South Korea for decades, but in 2019, the world finally gave him the flowers and accolades he deserved thanks to his masterpiece "Parasite." Written and produced by Bong, "Parasite" drops in on the impoverished Kim family — father Kim Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), mother Kim Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), son Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), and daughter Kim Ki-jung (Park So-dam) — struggling to make ends meet in their basement apartment in Seoul. When Ki-woo has drinks with an old friend who's set to attend college overseas, the friend tells him about a tutoring job with the wealthy Park family, and Ki-woo sets out to become a tutor to the Park children. 

From there, "Paraiste" briefly becomes a heist movie as the entire Kim family, without revealing that they're all related, get various jobs in the Park household through deception and sabotage; Chung-sook takes the place of the previous housekeeper after they oust her, Ki-jung passes herself off as an art therapist for the Park's troubled son, and Ki-taek starts working as the family's driver. "Parasite" takes a whole bunch of thrilling twists and turns throughout its run time, though, and when the Kims enjoy the luxurious Park family home when the Parks leave for a brief camping trip, everything changes thanks to the simple ringing of a doorbell. "Parasite" is a stunning achievement from a masterful director, netted Bong a whole armload of Oscars — including one for best picture, making it the first entirely non-English language film to win that honor — and is undoubtedly one of the best movies of the 21st century ... and like "The Housemaid," it investigates a wealthy home through the eyes of the "help."

"The Housemaid" is streaming on Starz now.