Keeper Film Analysis – Love Story Goes to Hell in Powerfully Spooky Horror

Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together represents a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled 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 periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often script for message instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.