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

In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising 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 discover quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed 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 soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many current scary films are, they often write toward theme instead of shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.