Keeper Film Analysis – Love Story Descends into the Underworld in Effectively Spooky Horror

Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together represents a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock 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 together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward theme rather than filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich 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 seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.