The Housemaid (2010)
Average Rating: 6.7/10
Reviews Counted: 64
Fresh: 47 | Rotten: 17
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.1/10
Critic Reviews: 20
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 4,971
My Rating
Movie Info
Eun-yi is an innocent young woman who is hired as an upper class family housemaid, and is tasked to take care of the family's small daughter and her pregnant mother, Hae-ra. Byung-sik is an older housemaid who has been with this family for a long time and holds many secrets. But soon enough, the master of the house, Hoon, takes advantage of his social position by slipping into the new housemaid's bed. Hoon's visits become frequent and Byung-sik reports the affair to Hae-ra's mother Mi-hee, who
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Cast
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Jeon Do-yeon
Eun-yi -
Lee Jung-Jae
Hoon -
Youn Yuh-jung
Byung-shik, Byung-sik -
Woo Seo
Hae-ra -
Park Ji-young
Hae-ra's mother, Mother... -
Ahn Seo-Hyun
Nami -
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All Critics (64) | Top Critics (20) | Fresh (47) | Rotten (17)
The situation continues to fester, the balance of power shifts back and forth among some wonderfully defined characters.
Top CriticThe graphic sex scenes radiate an uncommon heat, and Im can pull off a hugely effective shock when he wants to.
Writer-director Im Sang-Soo injects a certain sense of otherworldliness in the proceedings -- the final scene is straight from David Lynchland --- which may not make things mesmerizing, but does deliver a consistently odd angle.
"The Housemaid" scores on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin.
"The Housemaid" glitters coldly, with its marble surfaces and scheming eyes, as it builds to its dramatic, unexpected climax.
While the film grows increasingly preposterous in its final act, the enigmatic performances of Youn and Jeon carry the day.
Quick to show its characters' skin but less inclined to explore what lies beneath it.
With the honourable exception of a film-saving Byung-sik, the characters are too unpleasant and two-dimensional to keep it together.
...an echo of the 1960 film perhaps, but it's an echo that has been compressed and processed, run through the stomp box that is director Im Sang-soo's imagination.
Exudes a surreal sense of deranged domestic privilege.
Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid either doesn't know what it wants to be, or is trying to be too many things at once. Few films can claim to be over-ambitious and half-hearted at the same time, but there you go.
Can't touch the original's spiraling perversity
Evil seems to lurk in every shadowy corner and the director's choice of a primarily brown palette imposes a layer of foreboding over even the most apparently innocent of scenes.
The movie kowtows to the old truism that the rich are different - but it does it with a sardonic smile.
The Housemaid isn't all that deep, but it's consistent fun, on the cusp between art and softcore nonsense.
It's like a contemporary, even more heightened version of one of those Bette Davis movies that still show up on late-night TV.
Im creates a seductive and disquieting thriller in which overt violence is rare but ruthless manipulation and a callous lack of concern for people are commonplace.
Never comes to an emotional boil.
This South Korean thriller owes a lot to the late Claude Chabrol - its damnation of the idle rich, its imprisoning interior designs, even poisoning - but Sang-soo Im doesn't delve as deeply as Chabrol could and his film eventually implodes.
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Latest News on The Housemaid
January 21, 2011:
Critics Consensus: No Strings Attached Is A Little FrayedThis week at the movies, we've got friends with benefits (No Strings Attached, starring Natalie...
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Foreign Titles
- Das Hausmädchen (DE)
- The Housemaid (Ha-nyeo) (UK)
This may surprise you but "The Housemaid" is superbly made. Wow, the cinematography was absolutely gorgeous; excellent camerashots riddled all over this film. It's so sublime in fact that it leaves room for this movie to be identified as an art-house movie, but sadly, there isn't much to the movie except for eerie and surprising perversion, sickening revenge, and a twisted narrative.
It's funny because everything about the movie shouts "true filmmaking". Nevertheless, the narrative simply touches upon the characters' struggles and that's it. This movie isn't here to teach people not to do certain things and it isn't here to thematically stir audiences emotions; this movie is simply here to tell its narrative, which is much of the case for a profuse amount of Korean films, but ever more so with "The Housemaid". Once the credits roll, it seems nothing more than just a shallow but twisted movie that is easily forgotten except for its credible filmmaking craftsmanship.
So if its absolutely devoid of any substance aside from the production value, how is "The Housemaid"'s narrative? Is it entertaining? I guess so. It's gonna give you thrills, chills, and tension. It's also gonna give you strange goosebumps and surprises not because it's a great horror flick, but because of the audacious and extremely black raw sexuality that it throws viewers. C'mon now... it's almost like a cheap scare. Throw in some taboo-breaking content and you got yourself a shocking movie. That to me, is cheap. It draws you, but I was certainly squirming in my seat -- not cause I'm a pansy, but how deep "The Housemaid" chooses to let characters get sucked into a pitch black world of lies, deceit, hatred, and sexuality.
At the end of the day, "The Housemaid" is a stylish but extremely raw sexual movie. It's a movie about sex. That's about it. You think "Black Swan" was raw? LOL "The Housemaid" is stomping all over it, and its all its got: Mesmerizing cinematography and a taboo-shattering narrative. I ain't saying this is a bad movie but it's certainly not even close to what I would enjoy.