Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together represents a fresh tier of fright.
So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.
Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.
Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.
For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.
Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often script for message rather than shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.
He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences 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 mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful past is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.
The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.
Marlon Vance is a seasoned sports analyst with over a decade of experience in betting markets, specializing in data-driven predictions and strategy development.
