Keeper Review – Love Story Goes to Hell in Powerfully Spooky Terrifying Tale

In recent years, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares 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 periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward theme rather than filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.