Keeper (dir. Osgood Perkins)

by Jack Martin | Nov 16, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 99 mins

UK Distributor: Black Bear Films

UK Release Date: 14 November 2025

WHO’S IN KEEPER?

Tatiana Maslany, Rossif Sutherland, Claire Friesen, Christin Park, Tess Degenstein, Erin Boyes, Birkett Turton, Eden Weiss, Gina Vultaggio, Erin Tipple, Evelyn Burke, Ella Wejr, Glen Gordon, Logan Pierce

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Osgood Perkins (director), Nick Lepard (writer), Chris Ferguson and Jesse Savath (producers), Edo Van Breemen (composer), Jeremy Cox (cinematographer), Graham Fortin and Greg Ng (editors)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A romantic trip turns terrifying for a mysterious couple (Maslany and Sutherland)…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON KEEPER?

Interestingly, there are now two notable horror movies from this year which have specifically stylised themselves after the classic fairy tales of old, both by filmmakers who are more than capable of delivering the goods based on their past works (though in the case of Osgood Perkins, the director of Keeper, he actually has dabbled in proper fairy tale lore previously with his darker rendition of Gretel & Hansel).

But while Zach Cregger’s Weapons actually earned its stripes as a modern-day Brothers Grimm-style fairy tale with its sinister and occasionally fantastical storytelling, not to mention actually being fairly creepy every once in a while, Keeper has all the elements of a surreal fairy tale horror yet takes advantage of none of it. In a rare disappointment from Perkins, more recently behind Longlegs and this year’s The Monkey, the film – which comes from a script by Nick Lepard – falls so hard into genre convention that its ambitious ideas, fantastical or otherwise, end up going nowhere or, worse, to a place of surprising boredom.

After a seemingly random opening montage featuring various women throughout history being targeted by an unseen force, Keeper lands its initial focus on Liz (Tatiana Maslany) and Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland), a couple who are headed to a secluded woodland cabin to mark their one-year anniversary. Of course, as we’ve come to expect from isolated cabins in horror movies, it’s not long before a bunch of freaky stuff begins happening around Liz, namely a series of ghostly visions featuring the many women in that opening, and the arrival of a mysterious cake that’s apparently been gifted to them by the caretaker and, let’s just say, features more ingredients than just eggs and flour.

It’s important to note the context of Keeper being conceived and shot whilst production on Perkins’ The Monkey was stalled during the 2023 industry strikes (hence why both ended up being released the same year), with the director hiring Canadian writer Lepard for his non-association with the striking Writers Guild of America as well as hiring Canadian actors like Maslany and Sutherland whose participation wouldn’t affect their status among the also-striking SAG-AFTRA. The fact that Keeper, with its noticeably isolated atmosphere and limited number of cast members, really feels like a movie that was made during a time of great disruption in the film industry – not too dissimilar to when you could clearly tell something was shot in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic – is distracting enough, but none more so than how Perkins almost seems like he is also taking a break from his usual repertoire, with the director applying very little of his unnerving and sometimes darkly funny style to a narrative that’s much less surprising than the eye-catching if somewhat misleading trailers would have you believe.

To the trailers’ credit, they do a fine enough job of hiding just how conventional Lepard’s script is. On top of going through many of the typical motions for a movie like this, it spends so much of its runtime teasing the audience with visuals straight out of David Lynch’s wheelhouse that the ultimate reveal of what’s truly going on comes off as even more underwhelming. Little happens throughout the movie other than a few barely strung-together scenes of Maslany’s Liz either reacting in shock to sudden apparitions or acting weird for what turns out to be no good reason, which are interestingly shot by cinematographer Jeremy Cox but otherwise no different or more memorable than your average scary movie, and there’s little we learn about our two main characters in terms of motivation or backstory for even the committed actors to generate any sense of interest in them. It’s an unexpectedly boring movie for most of its runtime, one that’s far from scary and simply not interesting enough to hold the viewer’s attention, with Perkins displaying much less enthusiasm than usual as he treats the material as though he made it entirely on the side (which, in a lot of ways, he did).

And then, the film finally makes its baffling turn into fairy tale territory, but again unlike Weapons there’s nothing to suggest that Keeper has earned such a radical narrative swing, because there’s been almost no solid build-up to a reveal that requires a far greater journey towards this kind of destination. There are ideas on display here that are somehow both ambitious and weirdly generic, which Lepard suddenly throws into the mix as though he too had no idea where his story was eventually headed, and just decided to opt for a climax that combines predictable twists with all-out nonsensical fantasy. At least in his script for the more entertaining horror-thriller Dangerous Animals from earlier this year, there was never a point where Jai Courtney’s serial killer was revealed to have some sort of supernatural link with his adored sharks or something silly like that, and regardless of whether or not something similar turns out to be the case in Keeper, Lepard and even Perkins treat their disappointing resolution with an odd sense of apathy that rubs off on the similarly disinterested viewer.

So, if you’re after a 2025 horror with strong fairy tale vibes, I would recommend seeking out Weapons instead. It may not be perfect, but unlike Keeper it at least has more than enough foundation to support its ambitious blend of fantasy and horror, not to mention greater enthusiasm for its craft than a film that is nothing more than a half-hearted side-project for otherwise talented filmmakers to work on whilst their much better movie is on hold.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Keeper is a disappointingly generic and even dull attempt by director Osgood Perkins and writer Nick Lepard to combine surreal horror with fairy-tale fantasy in a narrative that’s neither scary nor interesting enough to work.