Keeper Review – Love Story Descends into Hell in Powerfully Eerie Terrifying Tale

Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often script for message rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.