Keeper: The BRWC Review.
Osgood Perkins’ Keeper arrives in the crowded landscape of contemporary folk horror with striking imagery, confident performances, and a premise with real potential. Yet despite those strengths—and a committed cast led by Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland—the film struggles to build momentum, sustain tension, or deliver any genuine surprises. What emerges is a moody, visually refined work that too often feels inert, predictable, and more invested in atmosphere than storytelling. Graced with glimmers of the filmmaker’s trademark unsettling sensibility but weighed down by sluggish pacing and thin character work, Keeper winds up a frustratingly uneven experience, landing squarely as a 2/5 effort.
The initial setup is a strong one: Liz (Maslany), an artist still attempting to define her life’s direction, is whisked away by her boyfriend Malcolm (Sutherland) to a secluded cabin for their anniversary. Quickly, the sense of isolation takes hold. Perkins leans into long, drifting shots of the surrounding forest, allowing nature to feel both indifferent and quietly menacing. The arrival of Malcolm’s overbearing cousin Darren (Birkett Turton) and his cryptic girlfriend Minka (Eden Weiss) injects a jolt of discomfort, albeit a brief one. Their dynamic hints at comedy-of-manners awkwardness, but it’s clear early on that the film wants to push toward something more opaque and unsettling.
The problem is that the tension never fully tightens. Liz’s nightmares and visions escalate—bloodied women screaming, a pregnant woman who looks like her, the disturbing pull of the mysterious cake in the cabin—but these moments are spaced far too widely and unfold at a glacial pace. Perkins aims for slow-burn horror, but the film frequently mistakes stillness for suspense; long stretches in the first half feel shapeless rather than deliberate. Scenes drift rather than build, and each eerie moment arrives without leaving much of a lingering chill.
This structural sagging diminishes the impact of Liz’s discovery of the cake’s hidden horrors and Minka’s abrupt disappearance in the woods. Both events should mark dramatic turning points, but because the surrounding narrative idles so much, they instead come and go with less propulsion than expected. The film promises escalation but repeatedly resets to a low simmer, testing the viewer’s patience.
What rescues Keeper from becoming outright tedium is the strength of its cast. Maslany delivers a textured, emotionally grounded performance, anchoring the film even as the script gives Liz frustratingly passive stretches. She convincingly navigates paranoia, fear, anger, and a creeping sense of betrayal. Sutherland, meanwhile, imbues Malcolm with a soft-spoken uncertainty that gradually hardens into something more ominous. His turn from seemingly gentle partner to chilling manipulator is telegraphed early on—part of the film’s predictability problem—but Sutherland’s commitment lends it gravity.
Turton and Weiss bring welcome energy as Darren and Minka. Darren’s blustering, boundaryless behavior adds dimension to his eventual unraveling, while Weiss walks a fine line between the uncanny and the grounded in her limited screen time. Their presence punctuates the film with flashes of unease and dark humor that the script could have used more of.
Yet even with these strong performances, the film’s most significant narrative revelations land with little impact. Malcolm’s confession—that he and Darren tortured and murdered a pregnant woman centuries ago, somehow receiving extended life from the inhuman creatures she birthed—is delivered in an extended monologue that clearly aims to shock. Instead, it feels like the natural end point of breadcrumbs that were too obvious from the outset. The “immortal men feeding women to monstrous forest offspring” twist is so heavily signposted that its arrival carries no surprise, only a sense of inevitability.
Perkins has always been a visually sensitive director, and Keeper maintains that reputation. The cinematography is consistently gorgeous: thick woods bathed in muted greens and grays, candlelit interiors that glow with a sinister warmth, and night sequences that swallow characters in velvety pockets of darkness. Perkins and his cinematographer capture the environment with an painterly eye, and several individual shots—Liz devouring cake in the dead of night, severed fingers hidden beneath frosting, ghostly forms drifting through the cabin—are chilling on their own.
But stylish images can only do so much when the narrative they support feels thin. The film leans heavily on its aesthetic, layering in visual motifs and unsettling compositions to suggest thematic heft the script doesn’t meaningfully explore. The creatures—twisted beings born from violence and neglect—could have symbolized inherited guilt, cycles of patriarchal control, or the monstrous consequences of buried sins. Instead, they function mostly as eerie background presences until a chaotic final act that accelerates too quickly and explains too much.
This climax arrives in a rush after so much languid buildup, giving it an oddly disjointed feel. What should read as a cathartic reversal instead feels like a tonal shift into campy operatics, one not fully earned by the quiet dread preceding it.
There’s no denying that the film’s ending is its boldest stretch. Liz’s confrontation with Malcolm, the reveal of the creatures worshiping her, and her cold, methodical revenge are arresting sequences. Maslany shines here, delivering a haunting, feral presence once Liz’s eyes turn fully black. The imagery is memorable, even iconic in moments.
Yet the pathway to this finale is so weighed down by narrative predictability and pacing issues that the payoff doesn’t hit as hard as it should. The film’s thematic gestures toward justice, identity, and victimhood feel underdeveloped; the emotional stakes, despite Maslany’s best efforts, never gain the necessary depth to elevate the ending beyond shock value.
Keeper is not without merit. Perkins’ direction exhibits undeniable craftsmanship, the cinematography is consistently arresting, and the performances are strong across the board. However, the film ultimately falters due to sluggish pacing, a predictable central twist, and an overreliance on visual style to mask narrative thinness. While horror fans may find individual moments to admire, the overall experience feels fragmented and shallow.
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