‘Keeper’ Review – A Bizarre, Genre-Twisting Nightmare
Osgood Perkins and many of the behind-the-scenes cast members of The Monkey made Keeper during the 2023 writer and actor strike. Utilizing a Canadian cast who could work around their SAG-AFTRA status and a Canadian writer not a part of the Writers Guild of America, Keeper became a way to keep working while The Monkey was held up in production.
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The success of Longlegs and The Monkey solidified Osgood Perkins as a refreshing new voice in the horror filmmaking community, but his work before that is much more divisive. Gretel & Hansel, for example, capitalized on strong cinematography and a masterfully crafted unsettling atmosphere, but its convoluted narrative restrains the film from being great.
Like Gretel & Hansel, Perkins didn’t write Keeper, and its snowballing storytelling will make or break your opinion of the film. The film follows an artist named Liz (Tatiana Maslany) and a doctor named Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) as they travel to a secluded cabin in the woods for a romantic weekend, which is Liz’s first time away from the big city.
The relaxing weekend becomes terrifying the longer Liz stays at the cabin. Malcolm’s cousin Darren (Birkett Turton) lives nearby and keeps dropping by unexpectedly, and she keeps hearing and seeing things that may or may not actually be there. Once Malcolm announces that he has to return to the city alone, Liz begins to lose it for real, and her situation becomes even direr.
Keeper has a giant-block-of-ice-melting-in-the-sun kind of storytelling. The film begins with glimpses of six or seven different women initially living their lives and reacting to someone whom the audience can’t see, during everyday occurrences, like a night out at a restaurant, walking down a street at night, or taking a bath.
But the situations become more startling; strange at first, like a confused glance or an angry frown, but eventually becoming increasingly uncomfortable, like watching someone throw up. Right before the title card is shown, we then see close-ups of each of these women covered in blood and screaming at the top of their lungs.
Liz’s story involves her not being used to the solitude of the country. She’s been dating Malcolm for a while, but through a phone call with her friend Maggie (Tess Degenstein), it’s revealed that she really doesn’t know that much about him. After they arrive at the cabin, Malcolm goes on and on about Liz’s painting that he insists on hanging upon arrival. He will make it a point to let everyone know that Liz is special and not like anyone else he’s ever been with.
If you thought the pie-eating scene in A Ghost Story was a chore to sit through, then you’re bound to hate what Osgood Perkins and writer Nick Lepard (Dangerous Animals) do with chocolate cake in Keeper, left as a gift from the housekeeper. It’s hyped up beyond belief. When Liz finally does eat a slice, she is then shown getting up in the middle of the night and returning to the cake and eating it in fistfuls until it’s gone.
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After eating the cake, Keeper questions if Liz’s strange perceptions are hallucinations or real effects of the cake or the wine she’s rarely without. Visual teases include a white face with a gaping mouth in a trash bag, an unnaturally long neck, and an old woman with a bag over her head crawling with flies, which appear briefly before vanishing.
These nightmarish flashes, scattered throughout Keeper, serve as the film’s intermittent sources of horror until the climactic final ten minutes. This horror emerges suddenly and unexpectedly, much like catching a cigarette burn on film stock or seeing a shooting star appear unannounced. These moments prompt both viewers and the characters to question whether what was witnessed truly occurred.
The finale is filled with peculiar imagery and strange creatures that appear human, yet are also distinctly different. While their origin is explained, the logic behind it remains unclear. The film’s choice to move in this direction during the final moments feels either underdeveloped or overly simplistic, making the narrative resolution confusing.
The film is centered on the common horror trope of it being a bad idea to go to a cabin in the woods alone. Despite not even being 100 minutes in length, it takes a lot of patience to get to the payoff, and it’s difficult to say that it’s all worth it. Keeper has an open jar of goopy golden jelly at the end of its elongated storytelling, but its brief and horrific glimpses of what that batsh-t ending provides are few and far between.
It’s the type of film that’s mostly grounded in a blossoming romance, only to plunge the audience headfirst into its gloriously grotesque, beautifully bizarre, and possibly meaningless symbolism. The film is an acquired taste, but it is worth seeing for anyone who welcomes anything outside the mainstream.
NEXT: ‘The Monkey’ Review — Outlandishly Gory Horror Pounds Its Way To Greatness
Keeper (2025), NEON
PROS
- The final ten minutes are great
- Solid performances
- A weird and unique concept built around a well-known horror trope
CONS
- Its meticulous nature could be tiresome to some
- Small payoff for a long buildup
- Some story details seem purposefully vague
