Amanda Seyfried – The Magnificent 60s

The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) *

Nobody told me this was a musical and a dire one at that, characters breaking into dirge-like tunes at any opportunity and throwing themselves about as if choreographed by Bob Fosse on speed. The kind of film where visual imagination is so limited that every now and then when a snake hoves into view, tongue tipping out, that we’re supposed to realize it’s an image from the Garden of Eden.

It’s such a mess that the director tries to rescue the narrative by imposing a dreadful voice-over commentary that tells us what the screen should have made abundantly clear. This device either robs sequences of any potency or avoids creating any scenes of note by relying on the voice-over to fill in the blanks.

And that’s a shame because there is a good story here to tell. A feminist one for a start, a woman by her own merit achieving a position of considerable importance in eighteenth century Britain and America. If you only knew the term “Shaker” in terms of furniture, then this is the one to disabuse of that notion. However, that term seemed to be one of contempt, an offshoot of the Quakers, who believed a woman would lead the Second Coming, which espoused a religion where they were shaking all over as an essential part of their worship of God, in part related to confessing their sins, but in part, I would guess, because singing and dancing with abandon offered pure physical – not to say sexual – release.

It was a particularly noisy religion. The stomping and yelping attracted so much attention that they were liable to be arrested for being too noisy. But there was a bright side to languishing in prison, at least for our heroine Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), who, on the brink of starvation, saw visions that elevated her to a position of leadership – the new Messiah – among her clique.

One of the tenets of the religion – no doubt caused by her being in a state of endless pregnancy with no progeny to show for it, all four offspring dead at birth or soon after – was celibacy. Fornication was strictly forbidden. While nobody gave mind to how that might prevent a new generation carrying on the religion, no doubt it contributed to its popularity amongst women who had to give in to their husband’s sexual demands even though continuous pregnancy wore them out.

Never mind the pregnancies, Ann had a particularly good reason for wanting to stop having sex with her husband Abraham (Christopher Abbott). He was fond of pornography (yes, the printed stuff existed then and was even illustrated so it appears), and of giving her a good whipping as a prelude to sex and he was also bisexual.

They take their singing and dancing to America. The lack of sex leaves Abraham to abandon his wife, which is just as well because she’s too busy setting up Shaker communities to be involved in any intimacy with a perverted male.

The singing and dancing aspect doesn’t go down so well in the New World, it being too close to witchcraft for some, and accusations of witchcraft being the easiest way for the male hierarchy to keep women in their place. For every believer there are a ton of angry disbelievers who don’t want anyone shaking all over.

I saw this as part of my usual Monday triple bill that had got off to a very good start with the interesting, though far from superlative, Elvis Presley in Concert, followed by a more than tolerable Scream 7 with Neve Campbell (returning now that the producers had acceded to her salary demands) introducing her daughter to the delights of being chased by Ghostface. I was looking forward to having enjoyed a very decent day out at the cinema. Alas, the final picture torpedoed that notion.

I should have known better than to avoid films that were touted as more than worthwhile on the back of critical acclamation and an Oscar nomination for the lead. If Oscar nominations were handed out for people debasing themselves or not using make up such as Demi Moore (The Substance, 2025), then Clint Eastwood should have been more in line for similar recognition given the number of times he was whipped or beaten up.

Certainly Amanda Seyfried (The Housemaid, 2025) goes through the hoops here but, frankly, the movie is such a shambles and the voice-over kills off much of the narrative structure that she’s wasted.

Another “visionary” director in the form of Mona Fastvold (The World to Come, 2020) who with husband Brady Corbett (The Brutalist, 2024) wrote the screenplay and who, having been given too much rope by indulgent financiers, proceeds to hand herself.

It might have worked minus the singing and eternal dancing and with the voice-over stripped out and the picture trimmed by a good 20 minutes. Who knows, we might get a director’s cut where the director sees the error of her ways and delivers a more sensible version.

The person sitting next to me in the multiplex gave up after a mere 20 minutes. I wish I had followed suit.

Just awful.

Behind the Scenes: Book into Film – “The Housemaid” (2025)

Now that Hollywood is waking up to the surprise hit of the season – worldwide gross now pushing $300 million – it’s equally surprising to discover just how much work went into converting a bestseller with a very enticing hook into a runaway success. The pitch is a stunner – abused wife grooms housemaid to take her place and, potentially, put her abusive husband in his place.

Screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine (The Keeping Hours, 2017) does a quite superb job of tailoring the bestseller by Freida McFadden. It would have seemed, on the face of it, with such a killer premise, you wouldn’t have to do much tampering. But you’d be wrong. What Sonnenshine removes and adds and touches up are a template for the art of screenwriting.

Major changes: the climax is completely changed and the role of handyman Enzo (Michele Morrone) considerably reduced, especially the icky section where our valiant housemaid Millie (Sydney Sweeney) looking for a no-strings-attached one-night-stand comes on to Enzo only to be rejected; and the screenwriter takes the “privilege” line that doesn’t appear until well into the book and brings it in much earlier, to add gentle menace.

Minor changes: just about everything.

The filling out begins at the start. In the book, there’s very little detail regarding the job interview and the grandeur of the house except that it’s grand. Here’s what Sonnenshine adds – the “W” on the gate, the display of enticing food that employer Nina (Amanda Seyfried) lays on for a prospective employee, the emphasis on the obnoxious child Cece (Indiana Elle) as a potential ballerina, the cops rousting Millie when she’s asleep in her car. Here’s what Sonnenshine immediately removes: the attic is smaller in the book, tiny, compressed, more ominous; an immediate warning from Enzo; and we don’t learn right away that Millie is a killer.

If you want to know the difference between taut narrative and drama, follow Sonnenshine. In the book, Millie meets husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) and child at the interview. In the film, it’s on her first day on the job when Cece introduces herself as the most obnoxious child, taking the new employee to task right away.

Other simple changes: in the book Millie starts work the next day, in the film she starts immediately following the job offer. In the book, Millie arrives overloaded with baggage that Nina doesn’t offer to help carry, in the film she brings very little and Nina does offer to help.

Major change: the heirloom plates. That’s pure Sonnenshine invention. They don’t appear in the book, and husband Andrew’s mother (Elizabeth Perkins) is scarcely in sight.

Sonnenshine also dumps Millie’s apparent first big mistake. In the book Millie makes Cece a peanut butter sandwich only for Nina to go ballistic because the child is apparently allergic. That’s too obvious a schematic and Sonnenshine opts for something better.

Right away, over the “dirty glass” issue, Sonnenshine brings in the first use of the “privilege” weapon long before as I said I was used in the book and never by the child. But she takes out the point about Millie’s glasses / contact lens. In the book this is a contentious issue – Nina accuses Millie of lying over wearing contact lens and glasses.

Also Nina gives her old clothes to Millie very early on whereas Sonnenshine dramatizes this so that it’s seen as an apology.

It’s Sonnenshine who adds drama to Millie’s visit to her probation officer and gives the probation officer the icky line asking Millie about her sex life. Nor, in the book, is Andrew mad keen on Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975). That’s another Sonnenshine touch, to fill out Andrew’s character. “Hot saint” is another of Sonnenshine’s lines. In the book it’s Andrew who suggests going to the Broadway show, not Nina, so that’s a nice gesture rather than with Nina, another apology. I should also point out that in the book Nina is about 50lb heavier than in the film. The ballet isn’t so dominant, either, Cece in the book attending a range of classes.

In the book, Andrew and Millie don’t get separate rooms at the hotel. They are all over each other in the cab to the hotel. It’s Sonnenshine who adds the dramatic urgency and ratchets up the tension in that in the film Millie tries to avoid intimacy and it’s only when she thinks she’s been fired by mobile phone that she falls into Andrew’s arms.

The film’s killer twisty line of “did you learn to cook in prison?” is better than the book’s “what’s prison food like?” Sonnenshine’s other big switch is that in the book Millie’ in juvenile detention not a scholarship kid as a private school when she commits murder. In the book Nina’s discovery of the Playbill program for the Broadway play is more discreetly done. But Sonnenshine turns it more dramatic with Nina coming down the stairs holding the magazine.

Nina’s immediate revenge in the book is to have Millie suspected of shoplifting after an anonymous phone call to a supermarket. Again, in the film it’s ratcheted up, Millie arrest for stealing her boss’s car and handcuffed and more roundly humiliated that provides the grounds for Andrew to chuck his wife out. The book cuts Millie out of the confrontation between husband-and-wife which results in Nina leaving.

And the book has no equivalent to Nina howling in her car apparently in despair at being chucked out, nor, in a marvelous twist, once we discover what hell awaits Millie, to cutting back to that scene and Nina turn that wail into a whoop of delight at being free.

Nina having to compensate for not getting her roots done by pulling a hundred strands of her hair out twice is in the book. But since the book didn’t include anything to do with priceless heirloom crockery, Millie’s first punishment is, frankly, a lot less interesting. Millie has to balance a stack of heavy books on her stomach for hours at a time. Honestly, that’s nothing, and visually zero, compared to having to rip your stomach open with the sharp end of a broken piece of crockery, which must be one of the most horrific scenes committed to celluloid.

And it’s not a cake knife left in the attic deliberately by Nina that allows Millie to escape, it’s the remains of a pepper spray that had formed part of one of Nina’s punishments. Stabbing someone in the neck with a knife versus blinding them with a pepper spray – what’s the more visual? You don’t need me to tell you.

His punishment in the book is rather long-winded especially bearing in mind that there’s no heirloom plates and assorted crockery to up the ante. So first of all in the book, Millie tortures Andrew by making him bear the weight of the books for hours at a time. It’s only days later, in fact, that in the book Millie instructs Andrew to pull out a tooth. Bear in mind, too, there’s been no lead-up to this, not in the book, which is why the screenwriter places such emphasis on his teeth and smile.

Sonnenshine tosses away the book’s ending. And you can see why. It’s not remotely cinematic. Sure, Nina returns to help. But in the book little help is needed. By the time Nina returns several days later, Andrew has already starved to death, or dead by dehydration, technically. That would be more easily explained to the cops given the problems with the door and Andrew in the house alone except in the book Millie has had her fun and made him pull out four teeth.

So, Sonnenshine opts for another course of action. He’s not dead when Nina returns. She makes the mistake of thinking it’s Millie locked in the attic and inadvertently frees her husband and then after some coming and going Millie pushes him over the banister and down about 50ft to his death.

Sonnenshine adds a happier postscript, Nina giving Millie $100,000.

I read the book after I saw the film so I was amazed at the quality of the script, the changes, the omissions, the additions and especially the nuances, the rounding out of every character. I doubt if anyone voting for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar ever reads the source material and that will probably count against Rebecca Sonnenshine come next year’s awards when virtue-signaling will probably win the day once again.

Other additions by the screenwriter: the toy troll, and therefore Cece stealing it from Nina’s bedroom, the creepy dolls house, and therefore Cece playing with it.

Much as I enjoyed the plot-heavy book, I enjoyed far more what the screenwriter made of it and I think Sonnenshine has played an enormous role in making the film such an appealing attraction.

The movie’s still going to be playing for weeks now, so if you get the chance check it out.

The Housemaid (2025) **** – Seen at the Cinema (Three Times)

An absolute cracker, two blistering performances, tons of twists, and set to become the word of mouth hit of the year. Clever piece of counter-programming though nobody was foolish enough as I was to market it as an “AvataMaid” double bill and just as well because it would blow the overlong and rather tepid James Cameron epic out of the water.

This didn’t come trailing a whole bunch of accolades from a film festival and print critics have generally been snooty about it because they don’t know what the public really wants. Nobody thought to sell it as a woman’s picture either, but I saw this (three times now) in a packed theater on a Monday night and the crowd, mostly women, just lapped it up. Not because it was a hot romance or said something pious about motherhood or women’s issues but because, without giving away too much of the plot, it featured two tough cookies, almost a modern Thelma and Louise, who weren’t going to take it anymore.

Nobody is what they seem. And the plot slithers from under you. I had no idea what this was about apart from the fact that the book was a bestseller. So I came in expecting the usual kind of story – new housemaid Millie (Sydney Sweeney) infiltrates millionaire’s household, dupes the loving mother Nina (Amanda Seyfried), seduces husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) and between them the lovers find a way of offing the wife and getting away with it.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Nina, who seems initially a great employer (giving Millie $20 at the job interview to cover her time), turns out to be anything but. The house is a complete mess, she blames Millie for anything that goes wrong, seems on the edge of a constant nervous breakdown, and eventually sets her up to be arrested. And there’s no bonding with her daughter Cece (Indiana Elle), the most stuck-up obnoxious brat.

On the other hand not only is Andrew goddam handsome with a fabulous smile, he’s a saint to put up with his wife. Turns out she spent nine months in a psych ward after trying to drown her daughter in the bath. And that means should they split up, she’ll likely lose custody, and thanks to the ruthless prenup, will be penniless, and mad though she is who’d want to give up a millionaire lifestyle.

Turns out there’s a reason why Millie is so sweet and never stands up to her employer. She’s on parole and her parole conditions mean she needs a job and an address. To lighten her load, Andrew takes her side against the worst his wife can throw at Millie. Unwittingly, Nina is the architect of her own downfall, and it’s no wonder Andrew and Millie end up in bed and in love.

That’s not a twist, that’s what the audience was led to believe was going to happen. Twist Number One is Nina’s reveal is that Millie is serving a 15-year stretch for murder, still a third to go while out on parole. Twist Number Two isn’t that Nina also knows about the affair or even that as a result of another exceedingly malicious act by his wife that Andrew throws Nina out.

Twist Number Two is the best twist since The Sixth Sense (1999). Initially, it looks as if Nina is distraught with grief at losing her cushy number. But that quickly turns to being hysterical with relief at being freed of Andrew’s grip.

Why she would want to be free and what kind of trap Millie is walking into forms the second half of the picture and that’s a helluva ride, twist piling on twist, a combination of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Jane Eyre (madwoman in the attic).

If we’ve had too much torture porn over the last couple of decades courtesy of Saw and its imitators, this raises the art to a new level. This is torture of the most subtle kind, at least initially, with one woman having to pull two hundred strands of hair (complete with follicles) out of her head.

But the best twist in this smorgasboard of twists is that it’s not Millie who’s walking into a trap, but Andrew. Millie was hired because she beat a man to death and Nina reckons she’ll be more than a match for her husband. I’m tempted to reveal more just for the pleasure on the clever tale, but I’ll let it go at that. And, as you have come to expect with this type of thriller, there’s a stinger in the tale. Here, there are two.

Sydney Sweeney (Eden, 2024) and Amanda Seyfried (Seven Veils, 2023) are both superb, and you have to take your hat off to Brandon Sklenar (It Ends With Us, 2024) for his transformation from saint to devil.

Neatly directed by Paul Feig (Another Simple Favour, 2025) and he does well to control the balance although obviously following the template laid down by screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine (Archive 81 TV series, 2022) adapting the Freida McFadden novel.

A welcome return to what Hollywood does best, beginning with a stellar story and then adding actors who can bring something to it, rather than the other way round, which usually results in a rambling tale only elevated by performance which is distinctly unsatisfying.

It says something for the quality of a thriller than even knowing all the plot points I was delighted to go back for a second look – and a third – and came away even more impressed at the way the pieces locked together.

Box Office Update: The Housemaid which cost only $30 million is already into hefty profit with $200 million, more than double the take of critical fave Marty Supreme (costing $90 million). Plus it’s been so successful there are plans for a sequel.