Horror at The Box Office: ‘The Housemaid’ is Becoming a Sleeper Hit
The throwback thriller The Housemaid, starring Sidney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, is becoming 2026’s first surprise hit. Sweeney plays a secretly sinister housemaid who becomes employed by a rich couple.
Sound familiar? With The Hand That Rocks the Cradle remake and the upcoming Victorian Psycho adaption, this is becoming a popular storyline these days. The combined star power (and sex appeal) of Sweeney and Seyfried in a lurid thriller has attracted throngs to the box office.
It earned nearly $15 million this weekend, finishing in third place with an incredibly slim 3% drop from the previous weekend. The Housemaid has earned $133 million worldwide on a $35 million budget. With such strong staying power, the film should easily be one of the most profitable movies of 2026.
It’s not quite a horror movie, but, like Anaconda, I’m resorting to horror adjacent properties due to the lack of true genre films in theaters right now.
Speaking of Anaconda, it earned an estimated $10 million over the weekend, upping its domestic total to $45 million and $88 million worldwide. Sony’s Christmas gamble is paying off with tidy profit.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finished in tenth place in its fifth weekend with an estimated $2.7 million, reaching $125 million domestically as it nears the end of its theatrical run.
Meanwhile, the Daisey Ridley zombie flick We Bury the Dead earned a respectable $2.5 million in a limited release, finishing in 11th place for the weekend. It’s received strong reviews, so it’ll be interesting to see if it can build buzz in the coming weeks.
Credit to Box Office Mojo for the figures cited.
Up Next
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and Night Patrol premier on January 16th. Both made my 2026 most anticipated horror movies list.
