Keeper Film Analysis – Romance Goes to the Underworld in Powerfully Spooky Horror

Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation 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 marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike 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 productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script for message rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.