Keeper Review – Love Story Goes to Hell in Effectively Spooky Horror

Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie 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. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout 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 feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often script for message rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.