Only one name made me tune into Keeper: Osgood Perkins. The filmmaker, who has earned his stripes in horror for over a decade and gave us a terrifyingly unrecognisable Nicolas Cage in the critically-acclaimed Longlegs two years ago, attempts to bring on the chills through his atmospheric thriller Keeper.
After a limited release in select theatres, Keeper is now streaming on Prime Video. The film employs a trope as old as the horror genre itself. Spooky events — some real, some imagined... but who can tell? — unfold at a cabin in the woods, but Perkins, surprisingly, is unable to do anything new with it. What we, therefore, have in this 99-minute watch is a film that delivers on its “experimental horror” ambitions, but falls short of its promise of a truly engaging watch.
Sprinkled with a dose of genuinely creepy moments, but ultimately emerging as lesser than the sum of its parts, Keeper is a serial-killer drama with its roots in folk horror. Perkins knows a thing or two about the latter, having directed Gretel & Hansel in 2020, a film derived from both fairy tale and folklore.
In Keeper, we have gifted artist Liz (Tatiana Maslany) and Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) heading out to his cabin in the woods to quietly bring in their one-year dating anniversary. Before that, the film starts with an unsettling montage of many women in various stages of distress, signalling that something sinister — serial killer/ serial dater? — is afoot.
Malcolm is an affluent doctor in the city, so this is no rustic cabin, but a plush address with rare artefacts, luxurious interiors and expensive wine (bottles of which seem to crop up at regular intervals, possibly to plug in loose plot points).
Malcolm is attentive and loving and his relationship with Liz has a lived-in feeling (or at least appears to be so). But all, as expected, is not well. The cabin is picturesque, but ominous. A not-so-appealing looking cake from the supposed caretaker of the cabin sits on the table. Malcom’s douchey cousin Darren (Birkett Turton) appears, his exotic European girlfriend Minka (Eden Weiss) in tow. Minka warns Liz not to eat the “terrible tasting” cake, but Malcolm coaxes her to anyway. A reluctant Liz does so, but wakes up in the middle of the night in a trance, heads towards the cake and starts wolfing it down in a manner that screams nothing but creepy.
Things go drastically south post that, with Liz being haunted by visions of bloody women, and much, much more. Malcolm heads out for what he says is an emergency medical call, and Liz is left alone in the cabin — having to contend with everything from a house that seems to have a life of its own, a creature-caretaker with a bag over its head and Darren popping up annoyingly, only to disappear without warning. Malcolm reappears, and with that we head back 200 years into the malevolent beginnings of this story, which works in parts but is, on the whole, pretty ineffective.
In Keeper, the mood is low-key and naturalistic, but the “impressionistic” dream logic treatment that Perkins aims for doesn’t come together in the way that he (and we) had perhaps expected.
Using elements of folklore about mythical creatures and a male demon who seduces women in their dreams and impregnates them, Keeper strives to also make a statement on the horrors of patriarchy and toxic masculinity in the modern world.
The film melds relationship anxiety with slow-burn horror, mostly brought alive through one performance that makes you stick with Keeper longer than you should. Tatiana Maslany is terrific, embodying Liz like second skin, taking the viewer through the physical, emotional and psychological unravelling of her character in an extremely palpable manner. But Keeper, ultimately, is unable to rise above its paper-thin script, one that relies more on creating horror in the moment rather than telling a solid and profound story.
A recent horror watch I loved is... Tell t2@abp.in