Give us the trash

A particular idée fixe of the cinema crowd for the past decade or so has been the idea that mid- and low-budget movies simply don't get made anymore; that the modern entertainment industry is so fixated on tentpoles, blockbusters, franchises, and established IP that there's simply no risk taken on smaller films, which is where the margins used to thrive for studios. This line of thought is usually lobbed out in tandem with the lament that either the romantic comedy or the studio comedy is dead – sometimes a dual lament for both genres.

While it's certainly true that you're less likely to find mid- and low-budget movies at the movie theater than you would prior to the 2010s, these movies are still getting made in droves; they're just being made for streaming services, which are lousy with them. Netflix and HBO and Peacock and Hulu and most other platforms you can mention are constantly churning out movies of all manner of budgets, and Tubi is quickly gaining a reputation as a home for zero-budget schlock of the type you used to be able to find among the new releases at Blockbuster on the grab-bag shelves between the big titles that had just come out on home video. The problem is that these are movies made just to have things on these platforms; the streaming services don't really care that much if you watch them, because they already have your money and just need to constantly be throwing content into the void so that nothing ever feels stagnant for an instant. This problem is further compounded by an overabundance of options, so that more often than not you just wind up watching something you've already seen, or select one of your favorite TV shows that are on the streaming service you're looking at. No box office take is recorded or reported, but generally they're not spending any money on marketing to try to get you into a theater to watch it, so that all comes out in the wash.

My gripe has never been of the "no one makes mid-budget movies anymore," because I know that isn't true: I've been watching those new movies this whole time, and more of them than I ever saw in the movie theater. (Although not more than I was watching in the home video era, but they didn't really have smart phones and YouTube to compete with back then.) My new gripe, after seeing The Housemaid, is that we need to bring back trash. Absolute, unrepentant feel-good trash.

The trash has never gone away either, of course! Tyler Perry created an entire cottage industry of trash. Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Blake Lively and Dakota Johnson (among many others) have been cornering the trash market in recent years. But when I grew up, trash was king. The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, Sleeping With the Enemy, Disclosure (the film that dared to imagine "what if something bad happened to a man?"), Jade, Splinter, Single White Female, Copycat, Body of Evidence, Color of Night, Pacific Heights, Malice, of course Indecent Proposal and the trash to end all trash, Basic Instinct. The list of action movie trash is even longer, but I'm going to stick to date night trash and mom trash for the time being. The Housemaid scratched an itch I didn't know I was desperate for someone to scratch: fun, well-made and absolutely unashamed trash that isn't as woefully brainless and baffling as something like the 50 Shades of Grey franchise.

Director Paul Feig has been something of the patron saint of the unsung genre, beginning with helming the blockbuster studio comedy Bridesmaids in 2011 and continuing with the Kendrick/Lively Simple Favor franchise. He also managed to gross $100 million on a $20 million-ish rom-com in 2019 with Last Christmas, which you may never have heard of. He's back again with a $35 million erotic thriller which has already grossed nearly $250 million worldwide. I didn't know a thing about the movie and in fact haven't even seen a commercial for it, and I loved every minute of the showcase for co-stars Syndey Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, the latter of whom gets far more opportunity to shine here and is having one hell of a renaissance period at the moment.

At the risk of spoiling the same experience for you, I'll keep the synopsis to the bare minimum: a young woman takes a job as a live-in housemaid, but slowly learns she may have signed up for more than she expected. That's all you need to know! You'll thank me later. The movie has melodrama, tension, laughs, sex, and everything else you want out of primo trash: including a spectacularly feel-good ending. 10 out of 10 trash cans, highly recommend.

Good for Paul Feig and his stars (who executive produced the movie) for shepherding exemplary trash to global success, and here's to lots more trash in our future.