Keeper Review – Love Story Descends into the Underworld in Powerfully Eerie Terrifying Tale

In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script toward theme instead of shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.