The Maid: Movie Review

"The Maid" was one heck of an experience. Not a perfect one mind you but a very fun one at that. One thing was its surprise turn into a very different kind of movie. The first half (composed of the first two chapters) was a straight to the point horror film while the second half turned into a gory and satisfying slasher. While there were setbacks that had us wanting more, there's no denying that even with its problems, "The Maid" will be one film that will leave its viewers at least satisfied.

A young woman Joy (Ploy Sornarin) decides to work as a maid to a wealthy and prominent family even though the household has had a very high turnover rate of maids. But it doesn't take long for Joy to discover why as she is haunted by a spirit who is dressed up as a maid. Who is this entity and why is she haunting Joy incessantly?

As we mentioned earlier, "The Maid" isn't perfect. In fact, it had a lot of issues as a film. One major problem it had was its lackluster writing. "The Maid" had a tendency to under-explain its story and characters around it. The first five minutes introduces a toy monkey which comes alive to haunt the people around it. After that introduction, the monkey plot just disappeared never to return again. Some people could deduce its actually the same entity that haunts our lead Joy but the film was never clear on that one. This also happens on key characters - like we really wanted to understand what the personal problems of the family Joy was working for and the reasons why they did what they did. But again, we really did not get any details on those - we just assume that they did bad things themselves and deserved their upcoming fate. Besides the writing, the film was quite enjoyable as a horror and slasher film. During its horror portion, the director was able to amp up the atmosphere and terror even without the use of jump scares. The slasher portion was the highlight which was all-out and no-holds-barred gory fun much like a "Kill Bill" experience. Overall, "The Maid" had a lot of head-scratchers in its narrative but made up for it with its highly-entertaining last half hour.

Rating: 3 and a half reels





Why you should watch it:
- the first half was average but the second half was so much fun

Why you shouldn't watch it:
- there are a lot of elements that the film completely forgets about
- it's a bit clichéd