Keeper Review – Romance Goes to Hell in Effectively Eerie Terrifying Tale
Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh level of terror.
Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.
Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.
Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.
Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.
Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.
He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.
The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.
- The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.
