In the same year that Angelina Jolie established herself as a leading star with the film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, she appeared in the critically panned erotic thriller Original Sin, alongside Antonio Banderas. Her spiritual successor in many ways, Sydney Sweeney, headlined her own erotic thriller this week, The Housemaid, following her foray into franchise filmmaking just last year with Madame Web. The Housemaid announced its arrival in grand fashion, finishing third on the domestic box office charts and course-correcting Sweeney's faltering career. The movie made $19 million in its opening weekend, handily overtaking the combined domestic box office gross of Sweeney's last four films, and also passing the lifetime haul of Original Sin.
Released in 2001 and directed by Michael Cristofer, Original Sin grossed only around $16 million domestically, and around $35 million worldwide, against a budget that has been reported to be as high as $42 million. The movie was based on the 1947 novel "Waltz into Darkness," and the recipient of some truly terrible reviews. It's now sitting at a 12% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics' consensus reads, "Laughably melodramatic, Original Sin features bad acting, bad dialogue, and bad plotting." However, with over 50,000 user ratings, the film's audience score on RT is perched at a far higher 69%. Although Jolie went on to receive a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for her performance, the late critic Roger Ebert defended her in his review, writing, "Jolie continues to stalk through pictures entirely on her own terms. Her presence is like a dare-ya for a man. There's dialogue in this movie so overwrought, it's almost literally unspeakable, and she survives it by biting it off contemptuously and spitting it out."
'The Housemaid' Has Been Embraced by the Audience
Directed by Paul Feig and also starring Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar, The Housemaid is based on a novel as well. Unlike Original Sin, the movie opened to mostly positive reviews and has also been embraced by the audience. It's currently sitting at a "certified fresh" 75% critics' score and a "verified hot" 92% audience score on the aggregator, where the consensus reads, "A sly throwback to the lurid thrillers that used to dominate multiplexes, The Housemaid cleans up nicely thanks to its wicked sense of fun and a delightfully unnerving performance from Amanda Seyfried." The "lurid thrillers of the past" that the consensus is perhaps referring to are films like Original Sin.
