Based on the bestselling novel by Freida McFadden, The Housemaid is a dark, sexy and satisfying thriller with plenty of twists to enjoy along the way.

Millie (Sydney Sweeney) applies for a job as a housemaid for the wealthy Winchester family. We first meet her as she pulls up to the grand Winchester house in her run-down car – a gated mansion with echoes of the sinister and mysterious Manderley in Hitchcock’s Rebecca. What secrets might be contained behind these gates? Millie is about to find out.

She is interviewed by Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), an eccentric and over-familiar housewife who is so taken with Millie that she immediately offers her the job on a live-in basis. An alarmingly artificial family portrait looms large in this early scene, suggesting that the Waspy Winchesters are more artist’s impression than reality.

Millie is given a bedroom in the attic – a strange place to lodge a housemaid, considering the enormity and grandeur of the Winchester mansion. The attic is stark, claustrophobic and loaded with

© The Conversation