'Keeper' is Osgood Perkins' scariest movie yet (review)

As with Longlegs, Neon has done a masterful job of not really telling you what’s going on in the teasers and trailers for Keeper. Accordingly, I didn’t really know what to expect. The story unfolds slowly but steadily in a surreal, dreamy fashion until the dream fully becomes a nightmare. Keeper keeps its tone tense and paranoid even through some of its more comedic moments. The movie does let you in on what it’s doing, but like the best mysteries, it doesn’t do so too early, allowing the main character’s confusion to echo run parallel to the audience’s.

I don’t want to spoil the reveals that Keeper provides, but I think the premise is worth relaying so people know what they’re getting into. The story follows Liz (Tatiana Maslany), a city gal who agrees to go on a weekend trip with her boyfriend Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) to his family’s secluded cabin in the forest. The cabin has a million windows and seemingly no curtains or shades, and very quickly, we, and Liz, get the sense that they are on display, but for whose benefit?

Perkins and cinematographer Jeremy Cox (second unit director of photography on both Longlegs and The Monkey) shoot Keeper in an intrusive, voyeuristic fashion, making the audience unsure if we’re looking through an omniscient view or the POV a specific, unseen something. And why can’t it be both?

As we’ve seen in the Keeper trailers, there are things in the forest watching them, and they are some of the gnarliest and most uncanny entities ever put to screen. Exactly what these things are, and why and how they do what they do, is part of the dread mystery at the center of the story. A few moments in the movie elicited a guttural gasp from me as a figure in the background moves in a wholly unforeseen way. I liken some of the images to the best of Junji Ito’s work.

So what exactly is Keeper? It’s often a relationship drama, with Liz unsure of whether to give herself fully to her feelings for Malcolm, or if there’s a particular reason she’s holding back. Malcolm’s boorish cousin Darren (Birkett Turton) provides a counterpoint to Malcolm’s quiet sensitivity. Still, there’s a feeling that one can never fully know their partner. Especially attempting to find love in your 30s or later, whoever you date has baggage, skeletons in their closet, so to speak.

Keeper is also a supremely slow-burning, hallucinatory descent into madness. It alludes to folk horror and dark fairy tale fiction, but while you might recognize some of the trappings, the execution is wholly original. It’s some of the scariest filmmaking I’ve seen in a very long time, allowing the grandeur of the land to seem as cosmically sinister as possible. Few movies have made me feel this icky without resorting to anything super graphic or untoward. It makes my skin crawl in the best way.

Maslany is absolutely incredible, carrying essentially every scene of the film. She fully commits to the absolute reality of the character and the unreality of the situation. Liz retains as much rationality as she can for as long as she can and remains savvy right until she hits the tipping point. When she breaks down, we feel it in our very souls. She has always been one of my favorite actors, since the very beginning of Orphan Black, and she’s only gotten better.

Keeper is not only Osgood Perkins’ best work to date, it’s up there as one of the most interesting and palpable horror films I’ve seen in a while. Go in with an open mind and zero plot expectations and allow it to ooze its way under your dermis.

⭐ (4.5 of 5)

Keeper hits theaters November 14, 2025.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.