Dark Secrets & Lies of Psychopaths & Narcissistic Elites
Earlier this month, I watched the 2025 psychological thriller movie, The Housemaid, on the indie channel. I have never heard anything about this movie. So, I had no expectations. I actually thought it might be a comedy, for some reason. I liked the opening song for the movie, Take Me As I Am, sung by Lyn Lapid. But after thirty minutes, I realized that all the characters are psychopaths. This dark comedy movie is wild, and crazy, but fun and entertaining because it kept my interest and attention, during the whole film. All the actors played their role well to make the film crazy and entertaining. I also thought the story seemed realistic about psychopath elites, and their obsessive control over the lower-class people.
The movie is narrated by Millie Calloway, as she writes in her journal about her housemaid experience at the Winchester’s house. It is mostly in Millie’s perspective. But toward the end of the movie, Nina narrates her perspective, explaining her past as well as the reasons for her plan. At the end, both women come together to fight Andrew and kill him in order to end this psychopath’s cycle.
I agree with this video recap that the story was similar to the Mommie Dearest autobiography as well as the Flower in the Attic novel because both books were about psychopathic, narcissistic elites, and their need to control others to feel better about themselves. I have read the book, Mommie Dearest, written by Christina Crawford, as well as the Flowers in the Attic novel series, during high school, and the writing for these books is better, as well as they were also crazy, fun, and entertaining to read. But the Flowers in the Attic movie was terrible, compared to the novel, which is likely why the movie industry did not make more movies about its sequel novels. It appears that The Housemaid novel was plagiarized, as well as the writing was low-level, due to the author’s laziness and greediness. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Applied Mathematics as well as a Doctor of Medicine degree, but her specialty is in brain injury, mental states, and trauma. Her medical background helped her create her mentally ill and psychopath characters. She wrote and self-published her novels on the side. Her novels became a bestseller in France, mostly via word-of-mouth promotion. These novels have been translated into 45 languages for her international audiences. I think that her writing is childish and simple, similar to Young-Adult novels, mostly for young people. I could have read her novels when I was ten or eleven.
After I watched the movie, I watched some movie reactions about this movie from different Youtubers. This MashMax video compiles different reactions from different Youtubers who actually had made a reaction video for the whole movie on their channel. These reactions are entertaining to watch, especially after watching the whole movie. I agree with some of their reactions and comments, but I also disagree with some comments. I noticed The Housemaid audiobook on Youtube, and I decided to listen to the seven-hour audiobook. I noticed some scenes were different from the movie. Hence, I enjoyed the crazy movie more than the bland novel.
While watching the film, I noticed dark-cult symbolism throughout the large elite house. There is a creepy chandelier with blonde-hair tassels hanging down from wooden, antler-like branches. One of the YouTube videos noted that the blonde hair was from Andrew’s fiancee, Kathleen, who eventually left him because of the abuse. The attic room looks like a very small illuminati-triangle pyramid-shaped prison-cell room with a small triangular window that does not open. It appears to insinuate some kind of control or mind control for whomsoever is inside that room, and it gave me a dark omnipotent feeling.
Nina’s seven-year-old daughter, CeCe, has a dollhouse, which is the exact replica to Andrew’s house. He designed the house himself, and he designed a miniature version for Cece. Inside the dollhouse, there are three dolls—a male doll, a female blonde doll, and a female blonde child doll. As CeCe plays with her dolls, I noticed some foreshadowing. Millie’s blue-haired troll doll inside her old car suddenly ends up inside CeCe’s dollhouse attic. CeCe had taken it from Millie’s car or attic to play with it as a voodoo doll representing Millie. Most horror movies tend have a creepy dollhouse, which comes to life, affecting the people living in the house. The spiral staircase symbolizes life’s cycles.
I felt that the characters were all psychopaths. Andrew’s mother is a narcissistic psychopath, and it is obvious she groomed her son via abusive punishments to teach him lessons. Andrew grows up to be a similar narcissistic psychopath because of learned behavior. He continues the abusive cycle by grooming the women whom he is involved with to be the perfect Stepford wife. Nina is always wearing an expensive white outfit because Andrew loves white. When Andrew married Nina, he made her bleach her brown hair to a blonde shade, and she has to maintain her look, coloring her dark roots, or she will be locked up in the attic room and punished. He controls Nina in other ways, such as gaslighting, as well as sending her to a mental institution with fake mental issues so she is given drugs to make her submissive and controllable. It also appears that Andrew is grooming CeCe to look, dress, and act like a ‘privileged’ child. It appears that he might have been using CeCe as a form of triangulation in order to control and manipulate Nina. And, Nina brings in Millie as a form of triangulation for her plan to escape from Andrew.
Andrew seeks certain women who are needy because he is a mama’s boy and he has mommy issues. He is a smooth-talking charmer, often acting sweet and caring to romance these women. The unsuspecting woman feels it is a fairy-tale relationship, and she falls in love with him, desperately wanting to be loved and cared for.
By the time Nina’s baby is seven years old, Nina decides to fight back to free herself and her daughter from Andrew. She is tired of all the abuse and punishments inside the locked attic. The attic has a surveillance camera and it is soundproof. I notice that some people’s YouTube video reactions compare Andrew’s relationship with women to the Fifty Shades of Grey characters’ Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. The male character is always very wealthy, independent, attractive, and charming. He also has power in the community, such as owning the police department and/or other businesses. The female character is usually plain-looking, intelligent, and needy. But this female is also smart and independent enough to fight back in order to put this controlling, sadistic man in his place.
Nina’s escape plan involves hiring a young, plain, and convicted felon, Millie, who is out on parole after ten years in prison for killing a boy at her boarding school. Millie appears to have anger-management issues, leading her to commit violent and murderous outbursts. Since Nina cannot kill Andrew, she hopes Millie will replace her as his new love interest, and Millie will eventually do Nina’s dirty work. Many elites in society and politics hire others to do their dirty work, before killing them off when this assassin, hitman, or thug is no longer needed. Nina creates issues for Millie, hoping Andrew will eventually leave her for Millie. Andrew eventually kicks out Nina because he feels sorry for Millie. Elated Nina drives off to a hotel and celebrates her freedom.
In the movie, the character Enzo has a small role. He is mostly quiet, doing landscaping work on Andrew’s yard, as well as other elites’ yard. But he lurks by, carefully watching Nina and Mille. He appears to have a past, as well, but the movie does not get into Enzo’s past. The audiobook novel explains that Enzo’s sister, Antonia, was killed by a man similar to Andrew, and Enzo wants to protect other women. He is actually close with Nina, and he tries to help her escape a couple of times. But she doesn’t want him to get involved in order to protect him. In the audiobook novel, Enzo helps Nina more, and she eventually has sex with him. He also teaches CeCe some Italian words.
While Andrew and Millie are alone in the house, Andrew romances Millie with lots of sex. As she falls in love with him, she puts together a breakfast-in-bed tray so they can continue their romantic breakfast-in-bed together. But she sees Enzo staring at her through the window, trying to warn her about Andrew, without saying anything. Enzo pretends he doesn’t know much English, occasionally blurting out an Italian word, which Millie googles on her iPhone. When his dark brooding stare, by the door, startles her, leading her to dropping the breakfast tray and breaking Andrew’s heirloom dishes and cups, Andrew seems to be understanding, telling her to put the broken pieces together because he knows a ‘Plate Guy’ who can fix the chinaware. She picks up all the pieces for Andrew and puts them together. But Andrew notices that the broken pieces are dirty because Millie didn’t want to cut herself while washing the sharp broken edges. Since, by now, she has moved downstairs with him, he leads her to the attic room, where he romances her and drugs her, before he empties the room, except for the sheetless single bed, and locks her inside. He starts administering punishments to groom Millie to be his future wife. After the last torturous punishment inside the locked attic, which involved cutting herself 21 times with one of the pieces, and it must be very deep cuts, she stabs him in the neck with a metal knife, runs out of the attic, and locks him inside. She starts breaking the heirloom chinaware to force him to pull out one of his teeth with pliers. But she refuses to let him out in order to make him suffer.
Meanwhile, Nina is with her daughter, telling her that they will travel far away to California to start a new life together. But CeCe looks disconcerted because she worries about Millie. Nina talks to Enzo, and he also tells her to save Millie. She realizes that her plan was wrong, and she needs to save Millie to stop the psychopath cycle. When she arrives at Andrew’s house, she thinks Andrew is inside his basement man-cave watching television. As she unlocks the attic, Andrew attacks her, Millie hears noises upstairs, and she comes out of the man-cave to see Nina rolling down the stairs. Millie turns into a superhero to rescue Nina from Andrew. There is a violent brawl between the three people. Andrew falls down the spiral staircase to his death. Nina drops a lightbulb from the top of the stairs to make it seem as though Andrew was changing the lightbulb and he accidentally fell to his death. She tells Millie to leave before the police arrive. She calls Enzo to help clean up the bloody mess. The police arrive at the crime scene, and the female cop ends up being Kathleen’s sister. (Kathleen was Andrew’s fiancée, who eventually left him, moved far away, and changed her name). The cop states that her sister was traumatically and psychologically messed up. Even though she felt Nina’s story didn’t make sense, the cop was happy that her sister finally got justice. She decides to lie and cover up the murder, making it appear to be an unfortunate accident. Actually, corrupt police tend to do that for powerful elites and others whom they associate with for some reason.
At the funeral, Andrew’s mother was emotionless. She robotically reiterates teeth are a privilege, and since Andrew lost his tooth or teeth during his death, he apparently lost his privilege. Evelyn also made a snide remark about CeCe’s clothing. The other elite women were crying at the funeral because they all loved Andrew’s perfect appearance and smile. The female cop was ecstatically laughing. Nina suddenly sees Millie nearby. She goes to her, gives her a check for $100,000, and tells her to do something productive with her life.
The movie ends with Millie’s job interview inside another elite’s house. The woman interviewing her has bruises on her wrist. This woman mentions that Nina had recommended Millie for the housemaid position. She seems eager to hire Millie as she nervously fiddles with the knife rack. Maybe she is hoping Millie will stab her husband. Millie appears to be excited and eager to start her new career as a hitman for abused elite housewives.
I have a feeling that the director and writer might make many movies involving Millie as a wealthy hitman for elite women. She is similar to a fearless bodyguard willing to kill off their abusive husband and free them from being abused hostages. It appears that the director is already working on the next film, starring Kirsten Dunst.
The author, Frieda McFadden, wrote The Housemaid series. Frieda McFadden, AKA Sara Cohen, wrote many novels. But there appears to be four novels in The Housemaid series—The Housemaid, The Housemaid’s Secret, The Housemaid’s Wedding, and The Housemaid is Watching. Since I don’t like her writing style because it sounds too childish, simple and basic, I probably won’t read her novels.
The Housemaid, a 2025 erotic psychological thriller and dark comedy, directed by Paul Feig, written by Rebecca Sonnenshine, and produced by Todd Lieberman, Laura Fischer, and Paul Feig, starred Amanda Seyfried, Sydney Sweeney, Brandon Sklenar, Elizabeth Perkins, Michele Morrone, and Indiana Elle. This movie was based on a novel, The Housemaid, by Frieda McFadden. This video displays some deleted scenes from the movie that did not make it into the final version for the movie theater.
The full audiobook for the movie might still be on YouTube, even though I cannot find the video anymore. It is over seven hours long and it is free. But I also noticed some audiobook videos for the novel in many short videos via each chapter.
I feel this novel is about feminism and women fighting back to get their power back, similar to 50 Shades of Grey series, Blink Twice, The Substance, Mommie Dearest, and Flowers in the Attic. The novel’s author is female and the screenplay was written by a female. The 50 Shades of Grey screenplay was written by a female, Blink Twice was directed by Zoe Kravitz, The Substance was directed by Coralie Fargeat, Mommie Dearest was written by Christina Crawford, and Flowers in the Attic was written by V.C. Andrews, who is a female.