Laura Wright

About midway through Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1977 novel The Shining, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) stands above a diorama of the Overlook Hotel’s giant hedge maze. As he looks down at the model, the camera follows his gaze as he seems to watch his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) as they walk through the maze, laughing, exploring, and finding their way out. The miniature maze and Jack’s position above it situate him as military general overlooking a tactical map of the war zone that is the Overlook Hotel and his madness within it. The miniature hedge maze – and the maze itself – are absent from King’s novel, but their presence in the film serves an important function in the way that the film situates Jack as “overseer,” both of the hotel itself and of the members of his family who he seeks to control and ultimately destroy.

But by studying the miniature and not the real thing, Jack “overlooks” Wendy’s will to protect her child and her ability to outmaneuver her husband. At the end of the film, she and Danny escape by running into the maze, Jack following behind only to get lost and freeze to death. Unlike Wendy and Danny who explore the maze, find dead ends, and master its layout, Jack never enters the maze until the end of the film. The tactical map that is the miniature maze, no matter how long Jack studies it, is a poor substitute for the real thing.

Tactical maps

The tactical map, employed by militaries the world over, consists of miniature versions of the elements of the battlefield landscape. It arose out of a sense of play but evolved over time to serve as an actual blueprint for military activity, helping soldiers visualize battle plans and become familiar with the lay of the land. According to Lt. Col. Wilbur Gray,

The first of the military games is thought to have been Wei-Hai (“encirclement”), a Chinese game which is usually now called Go. A later, similar game was the Indian Chaturanga, the system from which chess – in its various forms – came about. Chess itself gave birth to at least one game which more formally depicted armed combat. This was the 1644 design known as The King’s Game from one Christopher Weikmann. It included 30 pieces per side of 14 military types, each with a different fixed rate of movement. (Gray)

The break from simply playing a version of chess to using miniatures as a means of engaging in actual warfare occurred in 1780 with a game created by Helwig, Master of Pages to the Duke of Brunswick. Playing pieces in this version represented groups of men instead of a single soldier. Helwig later modified it by using a map board that depicted the actual terrain that existed on the border between France and Belgium. In 1824, Lieutenant George Heinrich Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz of the Prussian Guard Artillery introduced a game that included a number of new innovations, the most important of which was the use of topographical maps to portray the battlefield.

This wargame model became the standard for worldwide military conflict simulations through the First World War. Despite the fact that the games proved quite successful, “history abounds with examples of how commanders were defeated as a result of ignoring the result of a wargame” (Gray). Ignoring the truth rendered in miniature has proven deadly throughout history, as when a 1914 Russian wargame predicted defeat if the Russian troops did not begin their advance three days ahead of the Germans. The oversight resulted in the near complete destruction of Russian Second Army by the German Eighth Army that same year and over 100,000 Russian deaths. Ignoring the truth revealed in miniature is also at the heart of the conflict at the core of Paul Feig’s 2025 film The Housemaid.

Landscapes in miniature in Paul Feig’s The Housemaid

Like Kubrick’s The Shining, The Housemaid employs miniatures – in Feig’s case a dollhouse built as a replica of the house at the center of the narrative – as a means of allowing an abusive man (Andrew Winchester, played by Brandon Skelnar) to manipulate and control the woman and child that live with him. Also as in The Shining, in The Housemaid the women and children outmaneuver the men, learn the landscape, and turn the proverbial tables, ultimately winning the war of the sexes that is cast in miniature. Like the miniature hedge maze in The Shining, the dollhouse in The Housemaid – created by visual artist Briony Douglass – plays a central role in the film but is not present in Freida McFadden’s 2022 novel of the same name on which the film is based.

As in The Shining, The Housemaid’s landscape in miniature, the dollhouse, functions as a tactical map of the actual mansion in which the narrative’s conflicts – between the auspiciously named Andrew Winchester,[i] his wife Nina (Amanda Seyfried), and their new housemaid Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney) – are staged. Within the world of the film, Nina’s daughter Cecilia “Cece” (Indiana Elle) utilizes the dollhouse to depict the fate that awaits Millie if she stays with the Winchesters.

In The Housemaid, the Winchester house is showcased early and often. Just one minute and twenty seconds into the film, Millie arrives at the “W”-emblazoned gate that opens like theater curtains at the end of the driveway, presenting the mansion to the viewer in all its opulent glory and signifying the importance the home will play in the film. The film’s title appears as the camera zooms out from above just as Millie pulls her car to a stop in the circular driveway that looks like a keyhole, a subtle indication of what is to come later when Andrew locks Millie in her attic bedroom – also an homage to the cover of McFadden’s novel, which is an image of Millie’s eye looking through the attic keyhole.

After a brief interview, Nina shows Millie around, telling her “my husband Andrew designed this entire house soup to nuts” as the camera pulls back to show the viewer the house’s open concept with both the downstairs kitchen and the upstairs sitting room visible; the shot of the interior mimics an interior view of a dollhouse, like the one that Andrew has made for Cece, modeled on the real house that he has designed “soup to nuts.” As Nina describes the house and Andrew’s attention to detail, we see a chandelier situated above a winding staircase and festooned with what look to be long blonde locks of hair.

In showing Millie Andrew’s “man cave,” Nina tells Millie that she is free to use the space at any time but that if she does, she will likely be required to listen to Andrew hold forth on his belief that Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film “Barry Lyndon is a misunderstood masterpiece.” Kubrick’s film, which was critically panned upon release – and which directly preceded The Shining in Kubrick’s filmography – has been reevaluated by contemporary viewers and is now seen as a masterwork, particularly in terms of its visual elements.

Nina’s comment that Andrew argues that Barry Lydon is a “misunderstood masterpiece,” then, is untrue in the present moment of the film. Alex Harrison notes the way that Andrew’s choice of “a slow, stately, highly manicured period drama to be his whole personality” illustrates that “he craves the appearance of taste,” wanting his perspective on the world “to be special and worth being uncritically received.” Harrison also points out the significance of the fact that after Millie escapes from Andrew and locks him in the attic room, she goes to his man cave, gets drunk, and falls asleep while watching Barry Lyndon, a film about an emotionally and physically abusive man and his ultimate downfall: it is a clear indication, he writes, of how utterly unimpressed she is by his tastes and posturing. It is also possible to read this scene as a subtle jab at the auteur male filmmaker, the icon that is Kubrick, and perhaps self-critically, Paul Feig himself.

When Nina shows Millie Cece’s room, we see the dollhouse, a miniature version of the real house, that Andrew has made for the child. Nina continues past the door while Millie stays a bit longer, looking at the dollhouse in which three people – a little girl, a woman, and a man – are seated at a dining room table. The child and the woman are facing out as if they are looking directly at Millie (and at the viewer) while the man looks away, directly at the woman.[ii] The female dolls implore Millie to return their gaze and to understand its significance while the male doll is oblivious to the battle strategy being staged by Cece.

We learn that Andrew, fastidious, exacting, and rigid, has designed the dollhouse as a replica of the main house, a further attempt to stage the perfect reality. That he continually asks Nina to get her “roots done” prior to locking her in the attic and forcing her to pull one hundred strands of her own hair is a clear indicator of the control that he consistently exerts over Nina’s appearance and his desire to shape the visual tableau of the supposed perfect family. Whether or not the blonde locks that adorn the chandelier are pulled from Nina’s head or from the head of Andrew’s ex-fiancée Catherine remains unclear, but what we do see is that Andrew’s mother Evelyn (Elizabeth Perkins) has platinum blonde hair and that Cece’s hair, which is depicted as being dark brown or black in flashback, is also blonde in the present, a clear indication that Andrew is in control of this aspect of her physicality.

Later in the film, Millie and Cece play with the dollhouse, and Millie sees her blue-haired troll doll – which we see in her car earlier – placed on the bed in the miniature attic bedroom. Upset, Millie tells Cece not to touch her things and not to go into her room. Millie says, “you need to stay out of the attic,” to which Cece replies, “so do you.” We learn in a later flashback that Millie committed murder a decade earlier, killing a man who was raping her roommate. She grabs a glass globe in which the troll can be seen and smashes the assailant over the head with it, breaking the globe and killing the rapist. The troll, therefore, is a miniature manifestation of Millie’s righteous anger, a symbol of her ability to enact retributive violence if necessary, and, with its blue hair, a testament to Millie’s resistance of the status quo. That Cece places the troll in the attic bedroom of the dollhouse – along with her warning that Millie needs to stay out of the room – demonstrates that she is keenly aware of what is happening around her and has staged the battle plan accordingly as a warning to Millie. That Millie ignores the tactical mapping of the house and its inhabitants is unsurprising given her growing infatuation with Andrew and her growing alarm at what appears to be Nina’s manic behavior.

The Housemaid’s dollhouse: Perspective from the designer

I asked Briony Douglas, the designer of the dollhouse, how she feels the dollhouse creates meaning in the film. She said,

“the dollhouse plays a really important role in the film and feels like a clever storytelling device for foreshadowing what’s to come. It quietly mirrors events in the story and hints at warnings before they fully unfold.”

Further, she notes the way that Cece’s staging of the dollhouse works to foreshadow events that take place later, as well as mimicking the things the adults around her say and do: the dollhouse

“speaks to the importance of the example adults set for children. Even when you think a child isn’t paying attention, they often see and absorb more than we realize something Cece demonstrates throughout the story.”

While playing with the dollhouse in Millie’s presence, Cece often has the dolls parrot things that Andrew has said to her – that orange “juice is a privilege” and that “ketchup makes a mess” – indicating that she is also coercively controlled by him, a reality that she telegraphs to Millie in various ways.

While Cece knows what will happen if Millie, a younger doppelgänger of Nina, does not leave, Millie is oblivious, blinded by her forbidden feelings for Andrew. Little does she know that Nina has orchestrated the relationship that blossoms between Andrew and Millie; she creates scenarios that place Millie in situations meant to seduce Andrew, all while Nina pretends to be delusional and angry, turning Andrew’s gaslighting of her against him, including his framing her for trying to drown Cece and his manipulation of and cruelty towards her transgressions of his impossible-to-navigate obtuse rules. Initially, Nina does not care what happens to Millie as long as she and Cece can escape Andrew, but Cece asks Nina “what about Millie?” after Nina tells her that they are going to find a new place to live. Nina responds that Millie is “staying with Daddy,” but Cece asserts that she and Nina need to take Millie with them. Despite the fact that Nina responds, “Millie can take care of herself” – and despite the fact that this statement is 100 percent correct – Nina does go back to rescue Millie.

Turning the tables

Millie, however, has managed to escape her confinement in the attic, trapping Andrew and turning the tables on him. Just as he required Nina to pull out strands of her hair, he requires Millie to cut into her stomach using a shard of Andrew’s mother’s beloved heirloom china, which Millie accidentally drops and breaks, an action that sets Andrew’s cascading rage in motion. When he comes to set Millie free after she passes his test, she stabs him in the neck and locks him in the room, later forcing him to pull out a tooth in order to mar the “perfect smile” his mother and the other local women find so attractive. When Nina comes to rescue her, Millie has already escaped, and Nina accidentally frees Andrew instead, thinking that Millie, not Andrew, is locked in the attic.

The battle that ensues thereafter begins with Andrew begging Nina to come back to him and then devolves into him telling her that she is too old to find another good man to take care of her. Nina says that she would rather die than stay with him, and Andrew responds, “my pleasure.” Andrew moves to push Nina over the railing, but Millie pushes Andrew instead. His body ricochets off the bannisters and crashes to the flagstones below. After his death, Nina drops a lightbulb from the top of the stairs, and it shatters on the floor beside Andrew’s broken body. Nina says to Millie, “he fell trying to change a lightbulb [in the chandelier]. You know how he was. Everything had to be perfect.”

Just as Jack Torrance stands above the miniature maze at the Overlook, the women are positioned at the top of the stairs looking down on Andrew’s broken body and planning their next moves.

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Perhaps miniature spaces are staged so often in film adaptations because all filmmakers, to lesser or greater degrees, are creating their own dollhouse visual dioramas: dressing actors in costume, positioning them and their props, moving them around, and creating the physical environment that constitutes the mise-en-scène of the film. That most filmmakers who achieve acclaim are men, like Kubrick and Feig, requires that we read the trope of men like Jack Torrance and Andrew Winchester via the male gaze. The filmmakers oversee the men who oversee the women, staging a play within a play (or, rather, a diorama within a film) that in many ways undermines any real ability to read women’s agency within these works as anything other than performative.

I will conclude with Briony Douglas’s thoughts about the ways that dollhouses have historically allowed girls to stage heteronormative relationships that often place women within the domestic sphere as housekeepers and mothers. She says, “when I think about ‘home,’ I think about safety and comfort, and, growing up, the idea of a dollhouse captured that feeling for me.” But Douglas also notes their darker history:

“they were often used to socialize girls into domestic roles[,] essentially miniature homes where [they] practice organizing a household and caring for a family. Because of that history, they’ve become a powerful metaphor in film. They can represent both the beauty of domestic space and the feeling of being confined within expectations that were designed for [women].”

The dollhouse in The Housemaid also provides a commentary on women’s assumed place within both the home and the world of filmmaking.

While Kubrick and Feig create the reality of the film’s mise-en-scène, in both cases, women wrote the screenplays: Diane Johnson co-wrote The Shining with Kubrick, and Rebecca Sonnenshine is solely responsible for the screenplay for The Housemaid, adding the dollhouse (along with Evelyn’s prized china and the “W” on the gate in the opening scene) to the film’s narrative (Hannan). In the case of The Housemaid, the dollhouse and its contents are visual storytelling elements authored and produced by women that subtly subvert male authorship and undermine male narrative, marital, and visual authority. Millie, Nina, and Cece escape while Andrew dies, a victim to his own meticulous cruelty, in the house he made, “soup to nuts.”

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Notes

[i] Consider the possible connections between the Winchester mansion of the film and the famous Winchester Mystery House, as noted in this piece by Mel Valentin.

[ii] In “The Housemaid Exclusive Featurette – the Dollhouse (2025)” made by Netflix, we see Amanda Seyfried turn the male doll’s head away from the camera. While she seems to be playing around on set between takes, the impact of that move shapes the way I read the visual implications of the way the dollhouse is staged.

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Works Cited

Barry Lyndon. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, Warner Brothers, 1975.

Douglas, Briony. Personal interview. 13 March 2026.

Gray, Wilbur, Lt. Col. “The History of Wargaming.” HMGS: Historical Miniatures Gaming Society, 14 Sept. 2019, https://hmgs.org/blog/2019/09/14/the-history-of-wargaming/.

Hannan, Brian. “Behind the Scenes: Book into Film – The Housemaid (2025).” The Magnificent 60s, 29 Jan. 2026, https://themagnificent60s.com/2026/01/29/behind-the-scenes-book-into-film-the-housemaid-2025/.

Harrison, Alex. “The Housemaid 2025 Movie Barry Lyndon Joke Reaction.” Screen Rant, 20 Dec. 2025, https://screenrant.com/the-housemaid-2025-movie-barry-lyndon-joke-reaction/.

The Housemaid. Directed by Paul Feig, Lionsgate, 2025.

King, Stephen. The Shining. Doubleday, 1977.

McFadden, Freida. The Housemaid. Bookouture, 2022.

The Shining. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, Warner Brothers, 1980.

Valentin, Mel. “The Housemaid Review: Another Simple Melodrama from Paul Feig.” That Shelf, 21 Dec. 2025, https://thatshelf.com/the-housemaid-review-another-simple-melodrama-from-paul-feig/.