THE MAID’S ROOM
Opens on Friday
Directed by Michael Walker
1 hour 38 minutes; not rated
At the start of “The Maid’s Room,” Drina (Paula Garcés), a Colombian immigrant, is offered a job on a Hamptons estate. Her employers, the Crawfords (Bill Camp and Annabella Sciorra), confer as if she weren’t present: “She’s better than the others.” Mr. Crawford says he can pay her only $400 a week — a rate that soon proves negotiable.
As Drina settles into her cubby of a bedroom, the writer and director, Michael Walker (“Price Check”), teases out the proper mixture of psychological thriller and class satire. Drina discovers a gun in a locked drawer and a photo of Mr. Crawford with Bill Clinton. She spies on the couple’s son, Brandon (Philip Ettinger), who admits he’s gained admission to Princeton solely because of his father’s influence.
When Brandon returns home drunk in the predawn hours, “The Maid’s Room” suddenly takes on concrete stakes. (Mr. Walker signals that Drina will fight for a principle by having her hang an “Erin Brockovich” poster in her room.) The movie limns the power dynamics of the household, as those around Drina express their entitlement and seek an exit from the inescapable. Presumptuously but efficiently, Mr. Walker borrows several hallmarks of “Psycho”: a shifting narrative perspective, swampy grounds adjacent to the house and an envelope stuffed with cash.
“The Maid’s Room” has much to recommend, including the versatile Mr. Camp (“Tamara Drewe,” “Compliance”) in a Machiavellian role. But it doesn’t marshal its twists toward a convincing or satisfying conclusion.