Keeper Film Analysis – Love Story Descends into the Underworld in Effectively Eerie Terrifying Tale

Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins 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. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags or as oddly perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares 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 tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently write for theme rather than filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into 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 usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct 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 dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.