Movies & TV Keeper I Might Put Keeper Back on the Shelf Strong visuals and some cool ideas never quite come together. By Leah Schnelbach | Published on November 18, 2025 Credit: Neon Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Neon There are a lot of interesting ideas in Osgood Perkins’ latest atmospheric horror, Keeper. There are some striking visuals, excellent creature design, and, unsurprisingly, a great performance from lead Tatiana Maslany. And it’s possible that if this film hadn’t come out close on the heels of Presence, Companion, Heretic—not to mention Barbarian from a couple years ago—I’d be a little more excited about it. As it is, there’s a lot of cool stuff here that never quite comes together, and a lot of strong ideas that were, I think, interrogated in more satisfying ways in a few other films. Keeper creates a fantastic atmosphere, but that atmosphere often slipped into vagueness that pushed me out of the story rather than pulling me in. Keeper was written by Nick Lepard, and directed by Osgood Perkins, whose visual style and verve I tend to love, but who doesn’t always stick the landing for me. The plot is quite simple. Liz (Tatiana Maslany) has been dating Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) for a year. We learn pretty quickly that this level of commitment is unusual for her; we also see that Malcolm seems to enjoy her somewhat spiky personality. The two are celebrating their anniversary at Malcolm’s gorgeous modern cabin in the woods—all sharp angles and couches that are more like shelves carved out of raw wood walls and sheets of glass overlooking dense woods. A brook rushes just under the living room. The only room with a lock on the door is the single bathroom. Visually, the film is gorgeous, and creates a chilly, eerie atmosphere from the second the pair get to the cabin. The camera feels voyeuristic, peering at Liz from corners, through doorways, often creeping closer as though it’s stalking her. The light feels natural, and a lot of the scenes are lit with the glow of a phone (which, obviously, gets spotty signal at best), and even in daylight the sunshine feels dim and grey-green as it struggles through the leaves of the forest. There are noises in the walls, creaking, the sound of the brook, the rushing of the wind. The pair arrive to find a cake left by “the caretaker” who apparently “can’t keep the mice out of the walls” but must be a pro-level baker—the cake, once it’s revealed, is a glossy beautiful chocolate concoction enrobed in mirror glaze. Malcolm’s asshole cousin comes over from his house, next door, which Liz did not know about. He brings his weekend date, a model named Mika, whom he treats like a blow-up doll and insists can’t speak English. (She absolutely can.) He talks about Liz like she’s not in the room, and Malcolm does nothing to stop this. (He kind of apologizes later.) After the cousin’s finally gone, Malcolm all but forces Liz to eat a piece of cake, even though she doesn’t like chocolate—and after a year, Malcolm should know that. He doesn’t eat any himself. I’ll also note that he bought Liz a beige cardigan as a gift to bring—something she would never wear. Obviously strange shit is afoot. The cousins’ relationship is weird, Mika acts like she’s been drugged, what’s the deal with the cake??? Does Liz really know Malcolm at all? Well, no, of course not. Then Liz starts hallucinating, maybe, or maybe there are actually ghosts in the house, who’s to say? All of this is a rich stew that could turn into something really cool, a commentary on conformity, the way people construct versions of themselves for their partners, the way those partners construct versions of their beloveds to love or be mad at, the way certain types of misogyny tumble down thru the ages like the rushing water of a creek even as some aspects of society seem to improve, the way city folk moan about having to go to the country, the way sometimes being in the country is actually terrifying, the way dealing with your partner’s family can be THE WORST. (Boy could I write a whole other essay at this moment.) Layering all of this basic real-world stuff in, and having it play out against the backdrop of a house haunted by generations of women who were wronged in various ways, could have been great. What plays out instead is a plot that I figured out really quickly (which, again, could be fine—I also spotted the twists in Companion pretty quick because, you know, I’ve seen a movie before) but the problem is that the central relationship isn’t fleshed out enough, and Liz herself isn’t fleshed out enough, for the emotional beats to hit the way they need to. But the real problem here is that in our current cultural climate, I think a movie has to go way further than Keeper goes just to keep up with reality. I mention Heretic and Companion because I think they’re both mining the same vein of horror—the real hatred of women crashing into a somewhat supernatural or uncanny story. Where Companion and Heretic both soared in my estimation was that the performances of Jack Quaid and High Grant were both so nuanced that they felt like real people you could meet out in the world, and maybe not realize you’d just met a monster. Sophie Thatcher in Companion, and Chloe East, and, um Sophie Thatcher again in Heretic were so real as Iris, Sister Paxton, and Sister Barnes that there were points when I was holding my breath hoping they’d get through the movie in one piece. Keeper’s Rossif Sutherland is solid as Malcolm, but the script doesn’t give him nearly enough to do. Tatiana Maslany is great, but I don’t know what makes Liz tick, what she believes, what she wants out of life, I just know that she doesn’t like chocolate or beige, gets creeped out by the country, and doesn’t like being treated like an accessory by asshole cousins. In Heretic we had a pair of young girls trapped in an isolated cabin with a man who uhhh didn’t like women too much, it turns out! And in Companion we had a young woman going away for her first weekend trip with her partner, stuck in an isolated house in the country, wrangling his complex, tight-knit friend group who treated her like an outsider. I think both of those movies do more interesting stuff with the fact that right now, in the United States of America, in 2025, an enormous number of people who are living as functional-ish members of society absolutely fucking hate women. A lot of people want to see women suffer, they want to see them mangled, want to see them bloody and gouged and humiliated. A lot of the people who want to see that are also women! A lot of them think all the pain and degradation would make those women better people, and a lot of them don’t consider women people at all. In that context, and in the context of a year of extraordinary horror, Keeper never felt like the knife in the gut I wanted it to be. This is a very vibe heavy film. When the supernatural horror element finally hits, it’s great—but it doesn’t really get going until halfway through the film, and even then, a lot of the action is so vague and atmospheric that it’s never as frightening or as emotionally satisfying as I think it needs to be. The apparitions are fantastic. They start out really creepy, and becomes increasingly endearing as the film rolls along. They were the best part of the film, but in order to talk about why I liked them—and I liked them quite a bit—I’ll need to get into some spoilers. The film opens with a montage of women, clearly in different decades, moving from the joyful early days of a relationship to fighting and recriminations. The camera stands in for the man they’re responding to, so they act their happiness and their frustrations straight into the camera, at us. This sequence ends with shots of the women screaming and covered in blood, flipping along like frames in a film strip. Because of this montage, we know going in that Liz is in danger—and that’s where the film swerves a little, but not enough. In her first moments in the cabin, already a bit disoriented and feeling distant from Malcolm, she breathes on a window and draws a heart in the condensation. Later, as she takes a bath (in the one room in the house that has a lock on its door) we see a heart appear in the condensation on the window just above her head. And that’s where it becomes a different movie than I expected—a movie I wish it had leaned much further into being. Yes, the apparitions have fed on all those other women, for complicated reasons that aren’t explained well enough, but the apparitions love Liz, and take her side against the machinations of Malcolm and his asshole cousin. Which is what I meant by “endearing”. On first sight, the apparitions are actually scary, viscerally upsetting, but then they don’t do anything to Liz, because they like her. They gather around her like kids and ask for attention. So the Creature with Smoke for a Head and The Creature with Vile White Goo Dripping Down Its Face become… adorable. The problem is that we don’t meet the apparitions until the last third of the film, and their actions up to then range from “vague” to “slightly creepy”, which doesn’t make much sense after they literally drew a heart for Liz, and also means that we don’t get nearly enough of a comeuppance for Malcolm and his asshole cousin. The movie where Liz and the creatures are on the same team for three-quarters of the runtime would have been a lot stronger I think, and a much more interesting take on the ideas the film investigates. Here endeth the spoilers! On a more positive note, because I wanted to love this film and I hate to end on a negative: I think that if you’re looking for a particular type of sick glee from the mind of Osgood Perkins, The Monkey is fun as fuck, a great time, sheer joy from start to finish if you like that sort of thing, and I recommend that one wholeheartedly.[end-mark] The post I Might Put <em>Keeper</em> Back on the Shelf appeared first on Reactor.