Look, I get it. Sometimes you just need to clear your head with some good British comedy before diving into something heavy. That’s exactly what I did before settling in to watch Osgood Perkins’ 2025 horror film Keeper. And honestly? By the time those credits rolled to the tune of “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” all I could do was sit there going, “What the fuck did I just watch?”
It’s not that I didn’t appreciate what Perkins was trying to do. The atmosphere was undeniably brilliant, the cinematography absolutely stunning, and Tatiana Maslany gave it everything she had. But somewhere between the chocolate cake with human fingers in it and the multi-headed creature reveal, I found myself completely lost in the cerebral fog that Perkins seemed determined to create.
The Setup: When Romance Goes Horrifically Wrong
Keeper follows Liz, a free-spirited artist who’s lost her creative spark, as she heads to a remote cabin with her boyfriend Malcolm for their one-year anniversary. Malcolm’s this seemingly sweet doctor type, the kind of guy who gives you beige cardigans as gifts—which, let’s be honest, is already a red flag. From the jump, there’s this unease hanging over everything. Liz isn’t quite sold on Malcolm, and the film makes sure we feel that uncertainty in every frame.
The cabin itself becomes its own character, shot by cinematographer Jeremy Cox in this claustrophobic, unsettling way where you never quite get a full sense of the space. Windows appear at odd angles, air vents seem to breathe, and there’s always this feeling that something’s watching from just outside the frame. It’s genuinely unnerving stuff, and in those early moments, I was completely on board.
Then there’s the cake. This chocolate cake that Malcolm insists is from the “caretaker” (spoiler: there is no caretaker). Despite hating chocolate, Liz eats it at Malcolm’s insistence, and that’s when things start getting weird. Like, really weird. She starts seeing visions of screaming women, a pregnant woman who looks exactly like her, and eventually—in the middle of the night—is compelled to devour the entire cake. And here’s where it gets genuinely disturbing: she discovers severed bloody fingers inside it but keeps eating anyway.
The Characters: Masks Within Masks
Liz is the heart of this film, and Maslany does incredible work making her feel real even when the script gets abstract. She’s a woman who’s been conditioned by society to be polite, to go along, to not make waves. The film opens with hints that she’s someone who can’t “keep” partners, which adds this layer of insecurity to everything she does. When Malcolm’s obnoxious cousin Darren shows up uninvited with his supposedly non-English-speaking girlfriend Minka, Liz tries to be gracious even though every instinct is screaming at her to leave.
The way Maslany plays Liz’s gradual unraveling is masterful—you can see in her face and hear in her voice that she’s never been fully sold on Malcolm, but she’s trying so hard to make it work. There’s this beautiful, heartbreaking moment when her friend Maggie laughs at the idea of “a city subway rat” like Liz spending a weekend in the country, and you realize Liz is completely out of her element, trying to be someone she’s not for a man she barely knows.
Malcolm, played by Rossif Sutherland, is the film’s real monster, though you don’t fully grasp that until the third act exposition dump. He presents himself as this cordial, slightly awkward doctor who just wants a romantic weekend with his girlfriend. But every sweet gesture has this calculated quality to it. The way he insists she eat the cake. The way he calms her down with platitudes and wine when she gets scared. The way he just turns up the music when she’s screaming in the basement. It’s gaslighting taken to its most extreme, literal conclusion.
The film eventually reveals that Malcolm isn’t a modern doctor at all—he’s a centuries-old immortal who’s been luring women to this cabin to sacrifice them to supernatural creatures in exchange for eternal life. He and his cousin Darren murdered a pregnant woman over 200 years ago, and when she gave birth to these bizarre creatures before dying, they made a deal: bring us women to feed on, and we’ll keep you young forever.
The Creatures themselves are genuinely disturbing. These otherworldly beings with elongated necks, grotesque features, and—most disturbingly—a multi-faced entity whose various faces are composed of all Malcolm’s previous victims. They’re not explained much beyond “we don’t know what they are,” which actually works in the film’s favor. The ambiguity makes them scarier.
Where It All Falls Apart: The Cerebral Overload
Here’s where I started losing the thread. Keeper wants to be a lot of things simultaneously: a folk horror tale, a relationship drama about toxic masculinity, a commentary on patriarchal power structures, a surreal art film, and a traditional cabin-in-the-woods horror movie. And look, I’m all for ambitious horror that makes you think, but there’s a difference between thought-provoking ambiguity and just leaving your audience confused.
The film’s middle section is where things get repetitive. Liz does a task, hears a noise, investigates, finds nothing, has a nightmare. Rinse and repeat. It’s like Perkins is trying to drive us into madness through repetition rather than actual scares, and honestly? It just gets tedious. I found myself checking my watch, which should never happen in a horror movie.
Then comes the third act, where a character literally sits down and explains everything. After all that atmospheric mystery-building, Perkins just dumps all the lore on us in one scene. Malcolm reveals he’s immortal, explains the creatures, tells us about the pregnant woman they killed, lays out the whole sacrifice deal. It’s the exact opposite of “show don’t tell,” and it saps all the power from the mystery.
The Ending: When Revenge Becomes Transcendence
The finale is where Keeper gets genuinely interesting again, even if I’m still not entirely sure what it all means. The creatures don’t attack Liz—instead, they embrace her as their “mother” because she physically resembles the woman Malcolm murdered centuries ago. This breaks the immortality pact, and Malcolm rapidly ages overnight.
Liz, now transformed with the same jet-black eyes as the creatures, captures Malcolm and hangs him upside down by his feet. In a moment that’s both visceral and symbolic, she feeds him the drugged cake he intended for her, then dunks his head in a pot of honey—the same substance used to preserve the creatures’ mother’s head. It’s a reference to the ancient Chinese practice of creating “Mellified Men,” where bodies were preserved in honey to create healing salves.
The film ends with this image of Malcolm hanging there, honey dripping, while “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” plays ironically over the credits. Liz has become something else entirely—not quite human, not quite monster. She’s taken control, reclaimed her agency, and quite literally preserved her abuser the way he preserved his victims.
What Does It All Mean? (And Should We Care?)
This is where I’m still scratching my head. On one level, Keeper is clearly about toxic relationships and how men use manipulation and gaslighting to control women. Malcolm’s cabin is a literal trap, a microcosm of patriarchal power structures that seek to keep women helpless. The title itself has this double meaning—it’s not just about finding someone who’s “a keeper,” but about Malcolm’s selfish desire to keep everything for himself, including immortality at women’s expense.
The film explores how love can be weaponized, how women are conditioned to ignore their instincts and be polite even when every alarm bell is ringing. Liz keeps trying to make things work with Malcolm even as increasingly bizarre and terrifying things happen, because she’s afraid of being someone who “can’t keep a partner.” It’s a painfully relatable fear that the film exploits effectively.
But Perkins also seems to want Keeper to function as pure surreal horror, filled with symbolic imagery that you’re meant to interpret rather than understand literally. The chocolate cake could represent temptation, corruption, or the way abusers make victims complicit in their own harm. The creatures could be trauma made manifest, or the accumulated rage of all Malcolm’s victims, or literal supernatural entities, or all of the above.
The problem is that the film can’t quite commit to one approach. It gives us just enough concrete explanation to undercut the ambiguity, but not enough clarity to make complete sense. We’re left in this frustrating middle ground where we understand the themes but can’t quite grasp the mechanics of what’s actually happening.
The Technical Brilliance That Can’t Save the Narrative
I have to give credit where it’s due: Keeper is a gorgeous film to look at. Jeremy Cox’s cinematography creates this woodland austerity that’s genuinely unsettling. The way he frames the cabin—always from claustrophobic angles, never giving you a full sense of the space—makes the building feel alive and malevolent. There’s a shot where Liz is talking on the phone and in the background, this dull blue shape with an impossibly elongated neck extends along the ceiling. It’s the kind of image that stays with you.
The sound design is equally impressive, with voices whispering from air vents and floorboards creaking with intention. Edo Van Breemen’s score knows when to be subtle and when to swell, though the needle drops—particularly that final Elvin Bishop song—feel both ironic and earned.
And Tatiana Maslany, my God. She’s giving everything to this role, layering in subtle details through facial expressions and vocal inflections that reveal Liz’s entire backstory. You can see the exact moment when politeness clashes with survival instinct. She makes you believe every moment of Liz’s transformation from insecure girlfriend to something darker and more powerful.
But here’s the thing: all that technical brilliance and committed acting can’t quite paper over the script’s issues. Nick Lepard’s screenplay—written quickly during the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes when The Monkey production was stalled—feels like it needed another draft. The pacing sags, the repetitive middle section tests patience, and the exposition dump undermines the atmospheric mystery that came before.
Comparisons and Context: Where Does This Fit?
Keeper is clearly Perkins returning to his roots after the more commercial Longlegs and The Monkey. It has the enigmatic quality of The Blackcoat’s Daughter and the slow-burn dread of I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. But where those earlier films felt purposefully opaque, Keeper just feels confused about what it wants to be.
Some critics have compared it to Ari Aster’s Midsommar—another film about a toxic relationship unraveling in a remote location with folk horror elements and a female protagonist who ultimately claims agency. But Midsommar committed fully to its bonkers vision, while Keeper hedges its bets.
The film also feels like it’s in conversation with the “elevated horror” movement, trying to use genre trappings to explore deeper themes. And that’s admirable! Horror has always been at its best when it’s about something more than just scares. But Keeper gets so caught up in being elevated that it forgets to be effectively scary for long stretches.
The Verdict: Brilliant Pieces That Don’t Quite Form a Whole
So where does that leave us? Keeper is a film I simultaneously admire and find frustrating. The craftsmanship is undeniable—the cinematography, the sound design, the creature effects, Maslany’s performance. The themes about toxic relationships and patriarchal control are relevant and thoughtfully explored. The imagery is often striking and genuinely unsettling.
But as a complete experience, it doesn’t quite work. The repetitive middle section drags, the sudden exposition dump feels like a cheat, and the ending—while visually striking—raises more questions than it answers. Not in a “wow, this is deep” way, but in a “wait, what?” way.
I think the issue is that Perkins wanted to make an experimental, impressionistic horror film but couldn’t quite commit to that vision. He gives us just enough conventional horror beats and explanations to make us expect clarity, then withholds it in the name of ambiguity. It’s trying to have it both ways, and the result is a film that will probably inspire more think pieces than genuine appreciation.
That said, I can’t quite dismiss Keeper either. It’s the kind of movie that sticks with you, even if you’re not entirely sure why. Days later, I’m still thinking about that multi-faced creature, about Maslany’s transformation in the final scenes, about the symbolism of the honey and the Mellified Man. There’s something here, even if I can’t quite articulate what it is.
Final Thoughts: Who Is This For?
If you’re a die-hard Osgood Perkins fan who loved the ambiguity of his early work, you’ll probably find more to appreciate in Keeper than I did. If you love horror that prioritizes atmosphere and symbolism over narrative clarity, this might be your jam. And if you just want to see Tatiana Maslany give an incredible performance in a challenging role, it’s absolutely worth watching for that alone.
But if you’re looking for a straightforward horror experience, or if you found Longlegs too obtuse, Keeper is probably going to leave you cold. It’s aggressively weird in ways that don’t always pay off, and it demands patience that not every viewer will want to give.
For me, it lands somewhere in the middle. I appreciate what Perkins was going for, I admire the craft, and I respect the ambition. But I also spent half the runtime bored and the other half confused. And when that final credit rolled, my dominant emotion was relief that it was over, not satisfaction at having experienced something meaningful.
Maybe that says more about me than the film. Maybe I’m just not smart enough for what Perkins is trying to do. Or maybe Keeper is a case of a talented filmmaker getting so lost in his own artistic vision that he forgot to bring the audience along for the ride.
Either way, I’m still thinking about it. And isn’t that what good art is supposed to do? Even if I can’t fully endorse Keeper, I can’t dismiss it either. It’s flawed, frustrating, occasionally brilliant, and ultimately more interesting to discuss than to actually watch.
And honestly? After clearing my head with some British comedy, maybe that’s all I can ask for.
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