Keeper Film Analysis – Love Story Descends into the Underworld in Powerfully Spooky Terrifying Tale

In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan 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 creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, 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, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently script for theme instead of shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.