Keeper Review – Love Story Goes to the Underworld in Effectively Eerie Terrifying Tale

Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple paths, 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 due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward theme rather than shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful past is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.