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

Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of fright.

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 highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright hidden, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect 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 often write for theme rather than shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.