Keeper (2025) Neon/Horror RT: 99 minutes Rated R (some violent content/gore, language, some sexual references) Director: Osgood Perkins Screenplay: Nick Lepard Music: Edo Van Breeman Cinematography: Jeremy Cox Release date: November 14, 2025 (US) Cast: Tatiana Maslany, Rossif Sutherland, Birkett Turton, Eden Weiss, Tess Degenstein, Erin Boyes, Claire Friesen, Christin Park, Gina Vultaggio.
Rating: ** ½
After a solid one-two with Longlegs (2024) and The Monkey (2025), horror filmmaker Osgood Perkins stumbles with his latest effort Keeper. It’s almost like he forgets he’s making a horror movie. For most of its run time, it’s a slow and repetitive relationship drama with occasional supernatural elements sprinkled throughout. It doesn’t really kick into full gear until the end. If only Perkins had invested the whole film with the same crazy energy.
For their one-year anniversary, Malcolm (Sutherland, Orphan: First Kill) takes his girlfriend Liz (Maslany, The Monkey) to his cabin in the woods for a romantic weekend. It’s a remote house far from anyplace even remotely resembling civilization. It’s the perfect place for weird s*** to go down and does it ever.
Right off the bat, there’s something unsettling about the whole situation. Something doesn’t feel quite right. There’s something subtly off about Malcolm’s behavior. Then during dinner, his obnoxious cousin Darren (Turton, Family Law) shows up uninvited with his gorgeous Eastern European girlfriend Minka (Weiss, Christmas Under the Lights). He claims she doesn’t speak a word of English, but that’s BS. She speaks it well enough to warn Liz not to eat the chocolate cake supposedly left by the housekeeping staff as a welcome gift. Naturally, she eats it anyway.
Things start to get weird when Malcolm, a doctor, says he has to return to the city to tend to a patient, but will be back by nightfall. Alone in a strange cabin, Liz starts seeing ghostly figures in the house. With no means of escape, she starts to unravel.
In case you haven’t already figured it out, Keeper is elevated horror which means it’s a horror film but it’s really about something else. The director has something he wants to say and uses the genre as his platform. Perkins does not have a positive view of love and relationships. He paints a sad portrait of a far-from-perfect couple. Their relationship has a forced feel to it. Liz is depicted as a woman who can’t maintain a relationship for very long. She’s desperate to the point where she’ll try to make a go of it with a guy she isn’t entirely into, one whose behavior is questionable at times. And yes, there is something up with Malcolm. He has a HUGE secret. It’s not the usual issues that come up in relationships either. All the time Liz spends alone in the house speaks to the isolation one feels in a relationship built on something other than love or affection (aka “settling”).
Perkins spends far too much time reminding us what Keeper is really about. He keeps repeating the same points while delivering the expected jump-scare moments. To his credit, he does create a genuinely eerie atmosphere with a lot of help from cinematographer Jeremy Cox and editors Graham Fortin and Greg Ng, both of whom worked on Longlegs and The Monkey. Cox never gives us a sense of how big this house is. Instead, he uses tight, close-up shots to the characters to create a sense of danger closing in on them.
Mood and atmosphere only gets you so far. You need action to back it up. That’s where Keeper flounders. Some will say that it generates suspense. I say it’s boring. For the longest time, nothing terribly interesting happens. It’s just a woman slowly losing her mind. Didn’t we just see this last week in Die My Love? Jennifer Lawrence did it so much better. Not that there’s anything wrong with Tatiana Maslany’s performance. She does a fine job as Liz. The way she strings different emotions together in a single moment is impressive. She makes you believe she’s really going mad. She’s the best thing about Keeper.
Sutherland, son of the late Donald, projects quiet menace as Malcolm, the partner who’s clearly up to something. Again, it’s in his behavior. It’s in how he treats her and communicates with her. There’s nothing overtly malevolent, but it’s there.
I will NOT be revealing what happens in the final act of Keeper. I’ll only say it’s weird and f***ed up. In other words, all systems normal for Osgood Perkins. He’s a good filmmaker. He knows how to get under the collective skin of viewers. He doesn’t quite get there this time. He doesn’t build suspense so much as he does induce sleep for a majority of the run time. It’s too bad because Keeper could have been great. It has an intriguing premise; it just isn’t developed all that well. The script by Nick Lepard (Dangerous Animals) is half-baked. I was hoping for better from Perkins who I still see as a potential master of horror. I hope he finds his footing again with his next film.
