‘Keeper’ Review: Stylish Domestic Horror Film Mistakes Mood for Meaning
Keeper is a film built on secrecy. From its soft tiptoeing around a remote cabin in the woods to its intentionally quiet promotional rollout, the latest “bad trip” collaboration between NEON and Osgood Perkins signals that this is a horror movie hiding something. So, be warned, there will be (very) mild spoilers ahead.
Perkins has a distinct, wet, dripping, weepy style, and Keeper fits neatly into this established visual patterning. Cerebral mysteries in genre can be exciting when earned, under the right circumstances. The issue here is that all the misdirection leads to a thin, uncertain story reaching for depth on a subject it never demonstrates much grasp of. It’s a frustrating experience, watching a proven, talented filmmaker do his best to wrap the hollow narrative of Nick Lepard’s script in the trench coat of meaning.
Still, credit where it’s due: Perkins is a striking director with unique visual sensibilities. The Monkey, Longlegs, and The Blackcoat’s Daughter all demonstrate his ability to craft visually exciting, confidently controlled horror. The recurring problem here is the writing. Even his original scripts tend toward clunky, pretentious, structurally shaky choices. Keeper continues the trend of assuming ambiguity equals depth. And the film is too small and too contained to adequately hide the weakness of its script behind confident cinematic style.
Yes, Keeper regularly gestures toward ideas about partnership and the unseen hazards of intimacy. The promotional framing of the film suggests a psychologically dense horror story about intimacy and identity. But on screen, those ideas barely exist. Symbolism accumulates but never resolves, and metaphors arrive with weight but no follow-through. This is clearest in its protagonist—an “artist” repeatedly described as special and different, without any real exploration or proof of why. What does it mean that this woman is an artist? Why are we seeing her art? Who is she, and why she does she look like someone else? If soap operas like The Vampire Diaries and Dark Shadows can use similar tropes effectively, then clearly, it can be done.
That said, star Tatiana Maslany gives the film far more than the script ever offers her in return. Her character is essentially a two-dimensional perfect partner archetype. Liz lacks agency, failing to recognize dangers that should be obvious, and the doppelgänger storyline is introduced with gravity and basically abandoned. But the arc never develops or pays off. Maslany often seems to be acting in a richer, more emotionally grounded version of this story, proving again that she’s one of the most talented performers of her generation. Unfortunately, in contrast, her excellence also occasionally exposes how half-baked this chocolate cake actually is.
Keeper has a lot in common with 2022’s Men from peer mastermind of genre, Alex Garland. Both titles are small, stylized horror films that use metaphor to talk about gender, power, and domestic violence. And in both cases, these scripts do more to obscure their ideas than to actually clarify them. Both gesture at the horror of womanhood without really understanding it, leaving their themes feeling thin and unfocused.
There’s nothing wrong with filmmakers exploring experiences outside their own lived in ones. In fact, it’s an important and risky act in an overly sensitive media landscape quick to point fingers and assign blame. Still, it’s a risk for a reason, and this film showcases how it might go awry. And Keeper’s eventual move into a traditional horror ending only makes the disconnect clearer, landing as kind of awkward rather than insightful.
This leads to my main concern, which comes in the final act, where the film turns toward imagery and implications that invoke domestic violence as the collective faces of women who have endured it or died by it. This metaphor, if I grasped it correctly, has been used before with far more care and understanding—notably in Natasha Kermani and Brea Grant’s unevenLucky, a film made by artists who approach the subject with less vagueness. Keeper reaches for that same symbolism without the grounding to earn it, resulting in a product that feels somewhat misjudged.
In the end, Perkins remains an exciting and compelling director, but the weaknesses of a script by Nick Lepard overshadow his visual talent. In a small, contained story like this—without scope or world-building—those flaws become impossible to ignore. Maslany delivers a stunning lead performance, but the script never meets her halfway.
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Keeper
Summary
‘Keeper’ is a striking yet hollow attempt at using horror to say something meaningful from ‘Longlegs’ director Osgood Perkins.
