Keeper Review – Love Story Goes to Hell in Effectively Eerie Horror

In recent years, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script for message instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.