The film, bearing no small debt to Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, inevitably has a familiar feel. But director-screenwriter Nguyen infuses it with enough fresh elements to make it fully entertaining.
When its many secrets spill out in the finale, “The Housemaid” has to cheat a little to pull off a humdinger of a twist, but it’s enormously satisfying anyway, if only for bringing the core historical conflict back to the fore.