Keeper Review – Love Story Goes to Hell in Powerfully Eerie Terrifying Tale

In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts 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 learn early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward theme rather than shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman 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 performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.