Keeper Review – Love Story Descends into the Underworld in Powerfully Eerie Horror

In recent years, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself 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 – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner 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 diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often script toward theme rather than shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.