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

Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write toward message rather than filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.