Keeper Review – Romance Goes to the Underworld in Powerfully Eerie Terrifying Tale

In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated location together represents a fresh tier of fright.

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 highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently write toward theme instead of shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare 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 November 14th.