Keeper (2025)
Directed by: Osgood Perkins
Premise: Liz and Malcom (Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland) travel to a rural cabin for an anniversary getaway. Liz senses a sinister presence in the house.
What Works: Keeper is fundamentally a haunted house picture and it succeeds in creating a creepy tone. The entire film is set in and around a rural cabin and the filmmakers use the interiors effectively. The hallways and corners are used to create foreboding spaces. Isolation is a consistent theme throughout the movie and the building has a lot of windows with views of the woods, simultaneously creating the impression that Liz is alone but also trapped. The lighting is especially impressive, creating a spooky atmosphere. Keeper has a lot of beautifully crafted images that are strung together with creative editing. This is a quietly creepy movie. The supernatural forces gradually creep into the action from around the edges and it’s very unsettling. The extent to which Keeper succeeds is due to the craftsmanship and the performance by Tatiana Maslany as Liz. She’s a woman trapped in a relationship and her doubts and suspicions play in Maslany’s face. This is a story about violence against women. Without berating us with the idea, the filmmakers visualize a particularly feminine sense of danger that goes beyond the immediate threat. Osgood Perkins previously directed The Monkey and Longlegs and he is a filmmaker with a distinct cinematic style. Although the cabin-in-the-woods scenario has been seen many times (including several films of 2025), Keeper does not feel redundant.
What Doesn’t: The critical flaw of Keeper is the pairing of Tatiana Maslany with Rossif Sutherland as Liz and Malcom. They are supposed to have been together for a year but it’s not convincing that they even like each other. Their rapport is cold and awkward. They don’t have the familiarity of a couple this far into a relationship. While that is part of the theme of Keeper—how well do we actually know someone?—the relationship is unconvincing. That keeps the audience’s emotional investment to a minimum and there is no sense of betrayal or heartbreak as Liz uncovers the truth. Keeper also suffers from the inherent haunted house problem. Liz should get out of that house and there is no good reason to stay there. Like a lot of Osgood Perkins’ movies, Keeper is mysterious to a fault. Perkins sometimes mistakes incoherence for esoteric and the end of Keeper does not give the viewer enough information to make sense of what’s happening.
Bottom Line: Keeper is consistent with Osgood Perkins’ other films. It has his signature tone and technical skill and the film is scary but Keeper is also underwritten and confusing.
Episode: #1075 (November 23, 2025)