Keeper Review – Love Story Descends into Hell in Effectively Spooky Terrifying Tale

Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together represents a fresh level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently write toward theme instead of shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.