The Housemaid

On parole for manslaughter, Millie Calloway is hired by Nina Winchester as a live-in maid. She joins Nina's wealthy husband Andrew and daughter Cece at their home in Great Neck, Long Island, given an attic bedroom that locks from the outside. She also meets Enzo, a groundskeeper who states that she does not belong there when Millie introduces herself. Despite Nina's erratic moods, violent outbursts, and contradictory instructions, Millie is desperate to keep her job as a term of her parole. She learns that years prior, Nina was institutionalized for trying to drown Cece and attempting suicide by overdose.

At Nina's behest, Millie books tickets for the Winchesters to a Broadway musical and a hotel stay, but Nina denies asking her to do so. While Nina takes Cece to ballet camp, Andrew and Millie secretly attend the show, enjoy dinner together, and check into the hotel. Receiving a flood of angry texts from Nina, Millie is comforted by Andrew and they have sex. They return home, and Millie realizes Nina knows she spent ten years in prison for killing a rapist classmate in high school and is nearly arrested when Nina reports her borrowed car as stolen.

Nina finds the musical's playbill and threatens Millie, but Andrew defends her and demands that Nina leaves. Andrew and Millie continue their romance. Millie decides to serve Andrew breakfast in an heirloom china plate from his mother, but Enzo's presence outside the door frightens her and causes her to drop and break the plate. Andrew fires Enzo and calms Millie down, telling her to pick up the pieces and give them to him, as he knows someone who can repair the plate. That night, Andrew asks why she did not wash the broken pieces of the plate; Millie states that she did not want to get cut. He later brings Millie to the attic room, gets her drunk and locks her inside.

Celebrating her freedom from Andrew, Nina picks up Cece, explaining the truth in a letter to her daughter. She fell for Andrew while raising Cece as a young single mother, but early in their marriage, he revealed himself to be horrifically controlling. Andrew requested Nina to dye her brunette locks blonde. When she forgot to do so, he locked her in the attic room until she pulled out one hundred hairs from her scalp; he forced her to do it again after claiming that one strand was missing a follicle. He then drugged her, framing her for attempting to kill Cece and herself, and continued to torment her with confinement in the psychiatric hospital and the attic. Despite telling her version, no one else believed her story aside from Enzo, who unsuccessfully tried to persuade Nina to leave him. Determined to escape his abuse, Nina deliberately hired Millie, whom she knew Andrew would leave her for, and believed Millie could protect herself.

As punishment for breaking the china, Andrew gives Millie a shard and demands that she cut her stomach for each of the twenty-one pieces of the plate. She does so, but stabs him with a cheese knife hidden for her by Nina, locking him in the room instead. Ordering him to pull out one of his front teeth with pliers, she breaks more china and threatens to set fire to the attic, forcing him to comply. When Cece suggests she save Millie, Nina sneaks into the house and unlocks the attic door, believing Millie is still trapped inside. Andrew attacks them, but Millie seemingly escapes, and he attempts to kill Nina after she refuses to resume their life together. Millie reappears and pushes Andrew off the staircase to his death, while Nina drops a lightbulb, hoping it would appear as if he fell while fixing the chandelier.

A policewoman notices inconsistencies in Nina's story, but her sister was once engaged to Andrew. Aware of his true nature, she rules his death an accident. After Andrew's funeral, Nina gives Millie a $100,000 check before leaving with Cece to start a new life. She recommends Millie's services to a friend who indicates that her husband is abusive. Millie asks when she can start.