Given how hard Neon is working to make Osgood Perkins a household name in horror, it’s been surprising to see Keeper get such a muted rollout from the studio. Keeper is Perkins’s second release of 2025, and his third film in sixteen months – a breakneck pace for any filmmaker, especially one who has worked as sparsely as he had before his Neon partnership. And while the early reviews for the film have been mixed, do not be discouraged: Keeper is Perkins crushing the kind of slow burn horror that only he can make. In other words? Your mileage may vary.
After years spent falling in love with married men, Liz (Tatiana Maslany) is about to celebrate her first anniversary with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland), the kind doctor who bought her artwork and stole her heart. At Malcolm’s suggestion, the two head upstate to spend a long weekend in his family’s vacation home. Liz is hopeful that this getaway will go well, but bad experiences have taught her how to look for signs of infidelity, and she finds herself struggling to find the remoteness of the home – no matter how nice – as anything other than a bad sign.
It doesn’t help that Cousin Darren (Kett Turton), who lives in the house on the other end of the property, keeps showing up unannounced. Or that Darren’s date keeps popping into Liz’s dreams to warn her about putting too much faith in the Westbridge family. And as if that weren’t enough, she keeps doodling the same nameless women again and again – women who we as the audience only see in vague and violent flashbacks. So when Malcolm gets called back to the hospital for a medical emergency, Liz decides to head back to the city before things become more than she can handle – only to discover that something out there does not want her to leave.
Much like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Keeper deconstructs romance through the lens of another genre – in this case, horror. Malcolm might be Liz’s healthiest relationship in years, but her paranoia causes her to view each small gesture – the way he pulls his hand back from hers, the showiness with which he hangs her artwork above the staircase – as a coded promise of heartbreak. Meanwhile, every attempt Liz makes to relax is undermined by the house itself, whose creaking crossbeams or whispered echoes in the ductwork create a sense of unease that has very little to do with the supernatural.
This interplay between relationship insecurities and horror is the beating heart of Perkins’s latest film. As Liz struggles with her instincts, torn between her fear of commitment and the little voice in her head telling her something truly is wrong, Keeper places her in a tomb of her own self-doubt. By the time she is able to recognize the true danger of the Westbridge homestead, she is too paralyzed to stand up for herself. Perkins and screenwriter Nick Lepard do a masterful job of leaning into the relationship allegories for their film – so much of the paranoia in Keeper lands even if you remove the threat of the supernatural altogether.
If this sounds like a film reliant on its performances to succeed, well, you’re not wrong. You’re also in for a treat. Maslany was a revelation in The Monkey – while her talent has never been in question, her darkly comedic performance suggested an actor who was a perfect match for Perkins’s sensibilities. It’s no accident that Perkins made Maslany the star of his next feature, or that she has also been cast in the director’s upcoming film The Young People. Here she is wound tighter than ever, but the strain of this performance – viewed through the lens of Liz’s relationship fears – only deepens our connection with her character.
And while this might be Maslany’s film, Sutherland is no less compelling in his role as Liz’s cryptic paramour. The trailers for Keeper suggest a film shown through competing perspectives, but outside of a few short flashbacks, we only ever view Malcolm through Liz’s eyes. Sutherland, the son of the late actor Donald Sutherland, shares his father’s instincts for smart thrillers. Because Liz is herself an unreliable guide through her own story, we’re never really sure of what to make of Malcolm – that is, until he sits both Liz and the audience down and calmly explains what is really happening behind the scenes.
That is where Keeper kicks itself into its highest gear. And more than that, I will not say.
Those who viewed Longlegs as an evolution of Perkins as a filmmaker may find themselves frustrated with Keeper, which plays much closer to The Blackcoat’s Daughter or even Gretel & Hansel in the director’s folk-horror oeuvre. But Keeper is still Perkins at what he does best: characters whose loneliness makes them an easy mark for bad things. Less a departure and more a return to the filmmaker’s strengths, Keeper will be a gift to everyone on Perkins’s wavelength – and, as the early reviews already indicate, a headache to everyone else. [4.0/5.0]
