Paul Feig... we need to have a chat. Bridesmaids was legendary, A Simple Favor was strong, Another Simple Favor was fun, but new movie The Housemaid? Where have things gone wrong?

The director's outlandish comedic vision hasn't been without its hiccups over the years, but I don't think it sits in cohesion with The Housemaid. Adapted from the hit novel of the same name by Freida McFadden, the film follows enigmatic Millie (Sydney Sweeney) who has just taken a live-in nanny job at the wealthy Winchester's house. While husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) seems like a breath of fresh air, off-the-rails Nina (Amanda Seyfriend) is much harder to manage.

As more time passes, Nina's behavior gets increasingly more erratic, with plenty of family secrets bubbling up to the surface. Sadly, you can guess what the deepest of those secrets is at around the halfway mark.

It's never a good sign when you can immediately tell that the screenplay hasn't been adapted by the book's author, and for besotted book fans, the film has a more-than-healthy dose of creative licence. Key changes to the novel become more apparent the more you watch, and they make the overarching storyline a lot more violent.

The Housemaid is no longer an accessible crime thriller you want to devour as quickly as possible, but a soft body-horror movie with disturbing undertones and ridiculous B-plots. When the action isn't gory, it's laughable.

How The Housemaid turned from an acclaimed mystery into a cinematic mess

As I've touched on, the biggest problem in The Housemaid is the story itself – or more specifically, how the original tale has been interpreted. The casting wildly contrasts with how characters are painted in the book (Millie is more demure and innocent than Sweeney's version is, for example), and there's a much bigger emphasis on shock factor.

In short, we lose the beautiful subtleties of an unfolding whodunnit in favor of big-impact twists and turns that don't always pay off. If you're not a fan of blood, you'll need to bring a pillow to hide behind. By the time The Housemaid draws to a close, it rivals The Substance in terms of bloodshed and body horror, only in a much softer environment.

Largely, the movie hits the same beats as the novel, only there's another problem even when it's behaving. Scenes that should be serious and reflective become so farcical, you're stifling giggles so the people you're watching with don't think you're sociopathic.

While that isn't going to please everyone, I was thrilled to loudly witch cackle at the most preposterous things. From dialogue (Sweeney has a 30-second monologue about a manky Troll doll that she delivers with all the sincerity of being on her metaphorical death bed) to physical movement (some of Andrew's scenes are a unique laugh, let's put it that way), there is something to inappropriately chuckle at every few minutes.

It almost becomes a game: can you and your friends try not to laugh first while Amanda Seyfried is hurling priceless plates around her kitchen?

The performances are standard for a mediocre movie, but entertainment value varies.

I've been an Amanda Seyfried truther since Mamma Mia!, and she's consistently turned out dazzling performances across the two decades since. Frankly, she's earned the right to have fun making a far-from-serious movie where she can be a pantomime villain.

If you think of The Housemaid like this, Seyfried does the least amount of damage. Brandon Sklenar, however, is in his acting element. In the last two years alone, we've seen him in equally questionable movies such as Drop and It Ends With Us, and he fleshes out morally bankrupt husband Andrew with next to no effort. The man knows the landscape, and he isn't afraid to deliver genuinely terrible script with a completely deadpan expression.

I hate to say it, but Sweeney is the biggest problem I have with the cast. At no point do I buy her double-edged persona as a housemaid and stowaway criminal, and her romantic chemistry with Sklenar is non-existent. Where her natural style works in Euphoria and Anyone But You, it doesn't here.

Millie is a character you could root for, but it's frustrating work. In real-life, you'd have told Nina to stick her stupid housemaid job where the sun doesn't shine, walk out of her minimalist mansion and maybe hit a few objets d'art over on the way. I know why Millie rides her unhealthy situation out, but she's not making the best decisions.

If you're choosing to watch The Housemaid this Christmas, let it be known that a) it's not a Christmas movie, and b) it's perhaps the most painful present you could give yourself. Stay for the unintentional laughs, but brace yourself for anything in between.

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Paul Feig... we need to have a chat. Bridesmaids was legendary, A Simple Favor was strong, Another Simple Favor was fun, but new movie The Housemaid? Where have things gone wrong?

The director's outlandish comedic vision hasn't been without its hiccups over the years, but I don't think it sits in cohesion with The Housemaid. Adapted from the hit novel of the same name by Freida McFadden, the film follows enigmatic Millie (Sydney Sweeney) who has just taken a live-in nanny job at the wealthy Winchester's house. While husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) seems like a breath of fresh air, off-the-rails Nina (Amanda Seyfriend) is much harder to manage.

As more time passes, Nina's behavior gets increasingly more erratic, with plenty of family secrets bubbling up to the surface. Sadly, you can guess what the deepest of those secrets is at around the halfway mark.

It's never a good sign when you can immediately tell that the screenplay hasn't been adapted by the book's author, and for besotted book fans, the film has a more-than-healthy dose of creative licence. Key changes to the novel become more apparent the more you watch, and they make the overarching storyline a lot more violent.

The Housemaid is no longer an accessible crime thriller you want to devour as quickly as possible, but a soft body-horror movie with disturbing undertones and ridiculous B-plots. When the action isn't gory, it's laughable.

How The Housemaid turned from an acclaimed mystery into a cinematic mess

As I've touched on, the biggest problem in The Housemaid is the story itself – or more specifically, how the original tale has been interpreted. The casting wildly contrasts with how characters are painted in the book (Millie is more demure and innocent than Sweeney's version is, for example), and there's a much bigger emphasis on shock factor.

In short, we lose the beautiful subtleties of an unfolding whodunnit in favor of big-impact twists and turns that don't always pay off. If you're not a fan of blood, you'll need to bring a pillow to hide behind. By the time The Housemaid draws to a close, it rivals The Substance in terms of bloodshed and body horror, only in a much softer environment.

Largely, the movie hits the same beats as the novel, only there's another problem even when it's behaving. Scenes that should be serious and reflective become so farcical, you're stifling giggles so the people you're watching with don't think you're sociopathic.

While that isn't going to please everyone, I was thrilled to loudly witch cackle at the most preposterous things. From dialogue (Sweeney has a 30-second monologue about a manky Troll doll that she delivers with all the sincerity of being on her metaphorical death bed) to physical movement (some of Andrew's scenes are a unique laugh, let's put it that way), there is something to inappropriately chuckle at every few minutes.

It almost becomes a game: can you and your friends try not to laugh first while Amanda Seyfried is hurling priceless plates around her kitchen?

The performances are standard for a mediocre movie, but entertainment value varies.

I've been an Amanda Seyfried truther since Mamma Mia!, and she's consistently turned out dazzling performances across the two decades since. Frankly, she's earned the right to have fun making a far-from-serious movie where she can be a pantomime villain.

If you think of The Housemaid like this, Seyfried does the least amount of damage. Brandon Sklenar, however, is in his acting element. In the last two years alone, we've seen him in equally questionable movies such as Drop and It Ends With Us, and he fleshes out morally bankrupt husband Andrew with next to no effort. The man knows the landscape, and he isn't afraid to deliver genuinely terrible script with a completely deadpan expression.

I hate to say it, but Sweeney is the biggest problem I have with the cast. At no point do I buy her double-edged persona as a housemaid and stowaway criminal, and her romantic chemistry with Sklenar is non-existent. Where her natural style works in Euphoria and Anyone But You, it doesn't here.

Millie is a character you could root for, but it's frustrating work. In real-life, you'd have told Nina to stick her stupid housemaid job where the sun doesn't shine, walk out of her minimalist mansion and maybe hit a few objets d'art over on the way. I know why Millie rides her unhealthy situation out, but she's not making the best decisions.

If you're choosing to watch The Housemaid this Christmas, let it be known that a) it's not a Christmas movie, and b) it's perhaps the most painful present you could give yourself. Stay for the unintentional laughs, but brace yourself for anything in between.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.

Don't start a flame war with me just yet, James Cameron fans. Avatar: Fire and Ash is a movie that I genuinely enjoyed, but its cinematic baggage is a huge problem.

By 'baggage,' I of course mean the two previous Avatar films. When the original was released back in 2009, I quickly assumed (as did the rest of the world, I think) it would be a historical, record-breaking standalone. Now that the sequels have started landing, however, I think the concept has lost its shine.

The most straightforward way of describing Fire and Ash is that it's exactly the same movie as The Way of Water. For about 90% of its arduously long runtime (wear comfy clothes and book a recliner seat, if possible) the only difference is which natural element has stepped into the spotlight.

I'm even convinced that a pivotal scene has been cut and pasted in from the second film, so strong was the sense of déjà vu I experienced while watching it. There's the same inciting incident, the same challenges, and the same conclusion, for the third outing in a row.

However, if we look at Fire and Ash in isolation, I think that it's the strongest film of the bunch. It has the tightest pacing, the most impressive payoff, and Cameron's overall vision for Pandora gets more spellbinding as time goes on.

It's such a shame that it's brought down by context, much as a young person might be blighted by their family history before they've started to make their way in the world. We can't ignore that our third movie functions as a cog in the overarching Avatar machine... and that machine can only tell one, now fairly grating, tale.

Avatar: Fire and Ash's beauty tricks us into thinking that it's interesting

Usually, when I tell people that I find the Avatar movies boring, they look at me as if I've just kicked their dog. But I stand by my overriding IP argument – we are being hoodwinked into believing that what we're watching is interesting because it's so visually transcendent. In other words, beautiful cancels out boring.

I would give 35 stars, rather than 3.5, to how Avatar: Fire and Ash looks alone if the conventions of reviewing let me. I wanted to reach out and touch the Na'avi, marvelling at the detailed wrinkles, blemishes and intricate patterns being beamed across the big screen (in 3D, no less). I felt grateful to have hours witnessing it with my own eyeballs, worshipping at the altar of a kind of filmmaking that has yet to be matched or replicated.

Now imagine we took all of that away ,and the same story was acted out by humans or fully animated characters (let's hypothetically say in a Pixar movie style). What we're left with is a fairly run-of-the-mill sci-fi story comprised of fighting, disagreements, and themes of discovering your own identity and power. That could be applied to pretty much any movie in this genre, and others do it infinitely better (Aliens and The Abyss are Cameron's best work as it is).

Instead, Avatar is heralded as untouchable because of its astonishing visuals, regardless of the fact that The Way of Water and Fire and Ash are telling the same story, even though Fire and Ash does it more successfully. There are virtually no differences between them, especially if it's been a while since you've seen the second movie. How many times can you recycle the same ideas and get away with it, even if you're James Cameron?

Is everything else brilliant or oddly strange? I can't decide

As I've said, Fire and Ash is easily the strongest Avatar entry in isolation. Our fire Na'avi, led by Varang (Oona Chaplin) are an invigorating addition to Pandora's worldbuilding, giving both Jake (Sam Worthington) and Quaritch (Stephen Lang) a run for their money.

We surprisingly get much more whale time than in The Way of Water, and that's sensational news if you're a Payakan fan like me. There are a couple of aquatic creatures introduced that I'd like to have seen more of (there are some strange-but-cute-looking otters), and it remains the most remarkable biome in Pandora. It's also the place where the younger cast members can be the most themselves, and they're collectively the strongest performance in our Na'avi ensemble.

This doesn't include Sigourney Weaver, though. Kiri is a major player in Fire and Ash, and in the full pomp of her "this is what I'm capable of" journey. However, I think it's blindingly obvious that a 76-year-old woman is playing a 14-year-old. The giveaway is in the way Kiri moves, which is clearly the one downside of Cameron's maverick filming approach.

The main detail that bothers me, though – in the sense that I can't decide if it's satisfying or dreadful – is the conclusion. Without giving away what actually happens, there's narratively no need for any further movies. We get complete answers to any loose threads that may have been hanging over the franchise, so what does this mean for Avatar 4 and 5?

My guess is that they will each be a huge departure from what we've seen before, and while I should be grateful for that fact (given my biggest complaint here), that's also a concern. Our trilogy currently feels nicely rounded off, and any future sequels could feel gratuitous... or dare I say, like cash grabs.

But that's a problem for 2029, when Avatar 4 is set to arrive. In the meantime I'll remain conflicted about my enjoyment of Fire and Ash, even though I ultimately feel that it's monotonous. Still, at least you can watch essentially the same movie on Disney+ globally right now if you don't want to see Fire and Ash in theaters or wait for it to arrive on streaming – Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water are already on there, and Fire and Ash will likely join them in 2026.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

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