Keeper Film Analysis – Romance Goes to Hell in Powerfully Spooky Terrifying Tale

In recent years, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write for message rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.