Film

The Housemaid

Name: The Housemaid
Genre: Crime, Drama
Released: 1960
Cast: Lee Eun-shim, Kim Jin-kyu, Ju Jeung-nyeo, Um Aing-ran, Go Seon-ae

Other titles called The Housemaid: the 2010 film, the 2025 film.

Drama

A taut 1960 South Korean noir about class, desperation, and predation. When a composer's wife collapses under the strain of keeping the household afloat, he hires a housemaid—but her arrival unsettles everything, poisoning the home with resentment and danger. Beautifully shot, morally merciless, and still shocking.

TMDb rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like slow-burning domestic dread, where unease grows inside an ordinary middle-class home, and you're happy to sit with a claustrophobic mood built from small, tightening details.

Skip it if the melodrama runs broad and the pace is deliberate, so if you need quick cuts or restrained acting, its big emotions and stagey framing may wear thin.

What it asks of you: Runs just under two hours, moves at a patient, unhurried clip, and asks you to sit inside its heavy, airless mood rather than wait for relief.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Parasite2019

A modern masterpiece about class warfare that shares The Housemaid's DNA: a servant enters a home and the family's facade splinters. Bong Joon-ho channels the same dark humour and structural precision into examining inequality.

But If you want subtlety, this isn't it. It swings for the fences tonally and narratively, which some find showy rather than elegant.

In a Lonely Place1950

Bogart as a volatile man whose toxic presence corrodes everyone near him. Like The Housemaid, it's a character study of how one person's poison seeps into a home, but American and fatalistic in a different register.

But It's a slow burn about psychological damage rather than plot mechanics. Long stretches are quieter than you might expect from the setup.

Stoker2013

Park Chan-wook's English-language debut channels The Housemaid's atmosphere: a stranger arrives at an isolated house and corrupts everything through misdirection and performance. Hypnotic and visually meticulous.

But The pacing is glacial and deliberately artificial. If you need momentum or naturalism, it will feel like watching paint dry in a very beautiful room.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Housemaid

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles1976

Both use the domestic space and women's labour as their true subject, but where The Housemaid is a thriller, Jeanne Dielman is an act of witness. Same moral clarity, opposite formal temperature.

Chantal Akerman's three-hour meditation on a housewife's daily routines: cooking, cleaning, sex work. It doesn't judge; it watches. The Housemaid dramatizes what this film ethnographically documents—the violence of domestic labour and the body's exhaustion—but Akerman refuses narrative catharsis.

But It is intentionally, radically boring. Three hours of a woman folding sheets and preparing meals. Many people will feel they're being punished rather than enlightened.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles poster

The Servant1963

Joseph Losey's British masterpiece about a young servant who systematically dismantles his employer's household through manipulation. As much about power and seduction as The Housemaid, but set in Swinging London.

But It's intellectually cruel in ways that feel dated to some viewers. The sex and class commentary can read as period-specific rather than universal.

Marnie1964

Hitchcock's psychological thriller about a woman who insinuates herself into a household under false pretences. Like The Housemaid, it's fascinated by what lies beneath politeness and how women manipulate survival.

But Tippi Hedren's performance is controlled to the point of coldness. If you need warmth or likeability, there's almost none on offer.

Diabolique1955

A French thriller about two women trapped in a household with a tyrant, where the domestic space becomes a prison. Shares The Housemaid's understanding of the home as a place where violence festers behind closed doors.

But The shock value is deliberate and sometimes feels like the point. Some of the horror doesn't age as well as the atmosphere does.

Brief Encounter1945

Lean and Coward's masterpiece about desire eroding respectability. Like The Housemaid, it understands how quickly a household's emotional architecture can crack under pressure, though here the threat is romantic rather than malevolent.

But It's a chamber piece about middle-class anxiety. If you need action or revelation, the restraint will feel like the whole point—which is precisely what might frustrate you.

The Killing1956

Kubrick's debut noir about a heist that pulls together desperate people in a tight space. The ensemble paranoia and moral desperation echo The Housemaid, though the canvas is wider.

But The narrative structure is fragmented and sometimes frustratingly opaque. You have to work to stay oriented, and that work doesn't always feel rewarded.

Charulata1964

Both are Asian films from the pre-1970s about women confined to domestic spaces, but Charulata asks what happens when a woman's consciousness expands, while The Housemaid asks what happens when a stranger penetrates the home. Complementary problems.

Satyajit Ray's Bengali masterpiece about a woman isolated in her husband's house, slowly awakening to desire and intellectual possibility. Luminous, intimate, and built entirely on glances and silences—the opposite emotional register from The Housemaid, but equally concerned with how homes trap people.

But It's a film about the inner life, which means almost nothing happens. Gorgeously shot nothing, but if you need events, you won't find them.