Keeper (2025) [Movie review]
Two years in the making, Osgood Perkins delivers a lovely little slow-burning horror with Tatiana Maslany at centre-point. This is Keeper.
There’s a moment where a woman played by Tatiana Maslany, tormented in a dark cabin away from all civilization and haunted by spectral horrors, suddenly has to reevaluate what she thought she knew of her entire previous relationship with her partner, a guarded, bearded man who has left her stranded. Maslany plays that slow turning, the realization of what she thought was actually was, as something as horrifying as the spectral entities tormenting her themselves. It’s incredible, moving, and a testament to her talent as an actress.
I’m talking about a moment I was able to witness for myself [in the closed-too-soon Broadway horror play Grey House, which starred Maslany as “Max”, a woman stranded at a cabin in the 1970s Midwest by her husband Henry due to car trouble – a cabin haunted by what seemed to be the literal manifestations of murdered children, misogyny, and men’s violence against women; a cabin where not a single bit of foodstuff left out for you ought to be imbibed or eaten; a cabin where an artist draws at length what horrors may have trod these boards before, and you hear (or feel the vibrations of, if you could not physically hear) those horrors creak within your bones – a cabin in which things (people, events, and feelings all) are kept.
Grey House ran from April ‘til the end of July 2023 – as I said, it closed too soon, during the massive WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes. The entire industry, with the exception of the DGA, lay fallow in that time, and people were very open about their work and what protections were needed to ensure creative stability in the arts. I feel like Maslany may have felt something, some things, about the show were left unfinished, undealt with creatively, in the wake of its closing. Every artist, I think, wants to be creatively fulfilled regarding a role, or a theme shared between projects. Maslany, an Emmy-winner, has a thrilling amount of great projects in her C.V., from Orphan Black to Stronger to Destroyer to Perry Mason to Disney+‘s She-Hulk.
But the vein she’s always gone back to, the well that never runs dry, creatively, with her?
Horror.
From her very first feature film, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (made by future Orphan Black creative crew), to a Raimi-Tapert production she made in her native Regina, SK, where she played one of three ghosts tormenting Kristen Stewart called The Messengers, to George A. Romero’s penultimate zombie film, Diary of the Dead – and who, like a true horror connoisseur, can appreciate a good Brian Yuzna movie –- the vein is very deep, and very rich.
So, the strike left everything in limbo in August 2023. Having wrapped Longlegs, director Osgood Perkins was just about to start work on The Monkey -– the strike halted that. As a member of the DGA, which weren’t striking, he’s admitted he felt the strikes had nothing to do with him, and perhaps understandably just wanted to get back to work.
Fortunately, Canada has the best talent -– the best actors, the best producers, the best below-the-line, and the best writers; one of whom, Nick Lepard, had a script being worked up. Perkins, being a member of the striking WGA, could not write it –- so, for only the second time in his career (Gretel & Hansel being the first), he set forth to make one of his own films entirely from somebody else’s script. It was a creative challenge – as was the restriction to solely Canadian talent (The Monkey had U.S. actors cast in certain roles already).
And it was at that very time that Perkins and Maslany got together creatively to make Nick Lepard’s script – KEEPER. Coming off of Grey House (I feel past is always preamble), moving into this almost-a-remix must have felt to Tatiana Maslany like serendipity and magic.
For her first time – but not her last – Maslany jumped aboard the trip, a dark descent into the maelstrom with Osgood Perkins.
Your Humble Writer’s Thoughts on Keeper
Horror, Hands, and the Colour of Magick
Now, Grey House also dabbled somewhat in folk horror – the base magic carved from the ground; the lives and experiences shared between the living and the dead; the incredible jumps in time that feel second-nature to the characters even as they scream unnatural to the viewer. KEEPER goes full-tilt-boogie into folk horror – the wonderful sort of craft that produced The Stone Tape and The Wicker Man (the ’70s one, although Nic Cage is golden, to me).
And like a play, even like a guignol Robin Hardy folk-horror, keeping what corps it may have in reserve and focussing on just two or three central characters, KEEPER is what some would term a “chamber piece” – moving from two-hander to three-hander to four-hander and even back again to one-hander; it wouldn’t be the most difficult thing in the world to turn this into a staged reading.
But it’d be beside the point!
Beside the point, I say, because you’d lose the incredible visual flair provided by Perkins, his (Canadian!) DP Jeremy Cox, and his (Canadian!) production designer Danny Vermette, who put, along with interiors, the natural location of the house and its lush Pacific Northwest environs – it’s obviously Vancouver, from the jump – to such fantastic use that I’d argue the film might lose a good 2/5ths of its power without it. (However, that’s not to say it still wouldn’t be damned awesome.)
Every single light is perfectly placed for each shot, and there’s not a wasted shot, not a single spoiled composition in the whole picture – it’s exquisite, to the point where Perkins may arguably be spoiling your appreciation of other pictures this year by how good his is.
His other release this year, The Monkey, has a beautiful, lurid palette of reds, blues, and blacks. KEEPER indulges in blacks and blues, but greens, reds, and browns are the predominant hues – the script even hangs a lampshade on “beige”, in the form of a cardigan. (It’s the only beige thing in the entire picture.)
Canadian Character, Thematic Throughlines
Maslany’s co-lead – the guarded, bearded man of our picture – is Rossif Sutherland. He’s from Montreal (like the song about the dreamer), son of the late, great Donald Sutherland (whose son Perkins played memorably in Six Degrees of Separation) and Francine Racette (and, appropriately enough, half-brother of the man who announced Maslany’s Emmy win, Keifer). It fits the all-Canadian production ethos to have Sutherland as Malcolm; he doesn’t even try hiding the Quebecois tinting his English, and his soft speaking quality, resembling his father’s, gives a bearish sort of contrast (and not in the Marian Engel way, mind) to Maslany’s Liz’s rounder prairie vowels. (3000 km distance can produce a lot of contrast.)
I’ve seen, over and over again, Maslany being rated most highly for her ability to shapeshift as an actress, from playing dozens of different women in Orphan Black to literally changing via the help of VFX to a green superheroine in She-Hulk (with the quality of her original performance still strong enough to come through the pixels). So, it’s interesting to me how close Max from Grey House and Liz from KEEPER are – not entirely as the plot rolls out, but more in the way Maslany grounds the humanity in this woman amidst all the crazy, goopy shit Perkins launches her character’s way. Perkins is able to do things Joe Mantello’s theatrical production of Grey House wasn’t quite, due to how the medium of film operates as opposed to the theatre, but that doesn’t mean both aren’t still valid expressions of similar thematic experiences – and I think that’s why this project, and working with Perkins, appealed to Maslany so much; in the midst of the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes, it might’ve felt like a return home, to that horror vein.
And, after that frenzied shoot before the end of the strike, it was absolutely no surprise to me that Maslany immediately signed back on to do The Monkey right after. (And has since begun work on Perkins’s next feature, The Young People.) Technically, KEEPER bookended The Monkey by several months; NEON trusted Perkins enough at that point to give him 10 days of additional photography on KEEPER in December 2024, and the first extraordinary, haunting teaser for the film, unspooled after The Monkey’s end credits, came from that additional photography –- showing just how well-placed NEON’s faith in Perkins was.
Maslany Makes Her Mark
And that creative trust, that return home to horror, brings us back to that turning point I mentioned up top -– Grey House ‘s, yes, but KEEPER has an eerily similar one. (I can’t help but think executive producer Tatiana Maslany had to have brought some of her own creative capacity to bear on this, the resemblance is so strong.) I remember the theatrical moment, live in front of me, and KEEPER’s brought it so strongly to mind – not in a “stagey” way, but in just how natural Maslany plays what dances on the edge of Mia Farrow’s horror in Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.
It’s played almost like a Gena Rowlands-style monologue in a Cassavetes film -– Mabel Longhetti following her “treatment” in A Woman Under the Influence seems closest -– the unashamed slide into uncontrolled emotion, passing through each as realisation hits; no calculation, the most natural shift from one to the other. It never feels unreal, and that’s the genius of Maslany as an actress. Osgood Perkins letting her do what she does best is a testament to just how good he is at his job – it doesn’t hurt he himself, being an actor, the son of an actor, and the grandson of an actor, knows exactly how to get his performers to those moments.
One actor is credited as playing two different characters. I’m not saying which actor, because it’s a spoiler, but suffice to say I have it on good authority that Maslany personally recommended that actor to Perkins –- they also showed up in The Monkey, the only actor besides Maslany to do so – and they’re put to wise use by Perkins in each part onscreen. And, just like in The Monkey, there’s at least one theme in KEEPER hearkeniing back to Truffaut’s Jules et Jim.
Now, if you remember just how effusive I was about The Monkey, I’m effusive about KEEPER in a different way – the former was an outright dumb, goofy, glossy, glorious black comedy; KEEPER is closer than you might think to that, while still allowing Maslany and Perkins to stretch their own creative abilities in a smaller setting. Doing more with less – something seemingly paramount under strike conditions – is this film’s recipe, and the artfulness with which it utilises its smaller, non-SAG-AFTRA players to both shine and add to the creative fabric in their own way is a testament to Perkins and his (Canadian!) casting director.
It’s a trip to see Maslany, this far in her career and now the undisputed full lead of a horror film, tormented by shrieking ghosts vomiting dark fluids -– I say it’s a trip because Maslany 20 years ago was doing the exact same thing to Kristen Stewart, so the switch must’ve been especially fun for her to play. But there’s a double-switch towards the end that makes The Messengers comparisons play perfectly straight, and in such a way as voiced by Maslany (the ADR in this is incredibly well done) that, if you’ve got a pulse, your hairs ought to stand straight on end.
Luxury, Improv, and a Locked Box
It’s an unconsciously obvious sort of luxury that Liz and Dr. Malcolm Westbridge (the only person wealthy enough to afford a last name, in this film) drive up to in the woods – where both smartphones and record players exist within the cabin’s walls. But beside that luxury, it signifies the joining of old and new that KEEPER displays -– the running of the present back into the past, and shades of the future into the present.
And a smartphone is key in a sequence that, though relatively brief, provides emphasis to just how oppressive a presence dominating, toxic masculinity is in this film, as midway though, a cousin of Malcolm’s, played by Birkett Turton (Canadian!), stands within the house between Liz and her one outlet to the outside world – her phone. The slow dawn of where she’s left it, how she can possibly get out, and what the cousin does in the interim creates a sort of feeling I can really only compare to a key sequence early in Karl Freund’s Mad Love -– being trapped by a man between safety and danger, and being the only one to know it.
Earlier on, the cousin, Darren, barges in uninvited with a quiet young Eastern European woman named Minka (Eden Weiss, a talented influencer -– and Canadian!), and we get to see that time-honored tradition: The awkwardness of forced social obligation -– a dilemma that similarly drives perhaps one of the most misunderstood episodes of She-Hulk, “Just Jen” (the wedding episode). Sutherland and Maslany play these beats as naturally as a couple might –- they feel lived-in; Malcolm silently angry and apologetic, Liz trying to keep up with odd moments and responding with humor (there’s a line Liz says mocking Minka about how “I can’t talk because they scooped out my brains and put them into my tits” that sounds scarily close to something Maslany would come up with in improv – even the delivery is reminiscent of Snatched!.
But the character of Minka soon winds up on the wrong side of a sequence of events out of Sam Raimi’s best – and when she returns, she seems a bit beside herself. She has become “a pretty thing that lives in the house”. But pay attention to what she says, what she reveals – inside that dialogue are the first spoken inklings of the box Lepard and Perkins have been opening all along.
And I say “box” because, well, that’s what Maslany’s Liz compares herself to – like Minka, a pretty box currently at a Westbridge boy’s house. But the “experience” of “opening” each “box”, for Malcolm and his cousin – truncated in the cousin’s case, elaborated upon in Malcolm’s – is something you really only realise the deeper shadings of in a second viewing. (That’s recommended.)
It’s the sort of cramped feeling in a wide space you get from the best Hitchcock films – and there’s a sequence extremely reminiscent of one around the climax of this film. No, not the Hitchcock film you’re thinking of; I’m thinking of North by Northwest. Lepard and Perkins imbue a tautly-edited scene worthy of Ernest Lehman and Sir Alfred with their own authorial voice. It’s absolutely inimitable – and a lovely homage.
Voices of Light
It’s voices, just as much as images and movement, that stand out in this film – the cousins Westbridge have two different, contrasting accents; Eden Weiss’s Minka uses an Eastern European accent to creepily-distancing effect; Maslany’s liquid voice (comparable to both Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish in The Night of the Hunter) is never anything less than clear and grounded even as she’s put through the ringer in this picture; Sutherland’s Quebecois accent adds an even further lyrical quality to a speech he gives that is cut together with what he describes, bracketed by fables that connect images within the film together like fishes strung on a line.
And it’s an appropriate phrasing to use, because Lepard’s script and Perkins’s camera underline in the film a deep connection between fish, Liz, and water. Compositions echo each other in such a way as to bring earlier images in the film into your mind without the exact shot necessarily repeating. Sight and seeing, a certain shimmer in the eyes, and the feeling of being watched, are so present in how everything’s framed that you will probably feel at some point like you’re being taken along with the ghosts haunting this cabin -– and I think that’s exactly what the film wants you to feel.
There are shots that appear in the trailers and promotion for the film that I rather wish didn’t, because they arguably spoil moments that oughtn’t to be. I’m not going to spoil anything specific for you here, but I am going to seed hints that, once you’ve seen the picture, you will absolutely know what I mean.
If you’ve not seen Grey House -– I’m not entirely sure how many people reading this had –- this is not a spoiler. If you have seen Grey House, it’s still not a spoiler, because the resolution comes across in a thematically similar, but somewhat different way from Grey House. I really don’t want to give away how, because I think it’s part of Perkins’s genius to have the audience come away from the picture’s ending with the exact perfect feeling.
(And while I was writing this, another parallel came to mind -– eerily-lit containers of a liquid that plays into the resolution of the film. And that’s as specific as I will be for the time being.)
Spoiler Warnings, Sound, and Music
Now, I’ve been seeing people give away in their reviews far more than I think is right for this film -– there’s so much I think people ought to be going into not knowing about. But a moment right at the end suddenly reminded me of just how personal Osgood Perkins’s stories can be to himself -– relating to his own family history, and to his mother. You could almost call it a throwaway line, but I can’t help but think either Perkins or Lepard have it there for that specific reason; very plainly.
Even the smallest touches seem deliberate, whether comic (when Malcolm puts on a pair of tiny sunglasses at one point in the film) or otherwise (a small outdoor food stall in the film’s second montage sequence), but the touches that may linger with you most are KEEPER’s bigger, more outré swings -– including the most perfectly disgusting sequence involving a chocolate cake since Bruce Bogtrotter in Matilda, fading into and out of itself hypnotically, and overlaid with moist sounds that you won’t be able to unstick from your head. In fact, I worry if you’re hard of hearing or profoundly deaf, you may miss a great impact of the picture via Eugenio Battaglia’s sound design – because closed captions and descriptions alone will not make you start looking for things in your house every time you feel a loud, low creak after you see this picture. It’s unfortunate, but the effect is so strong I can’t understress it.
Returning from The Monkey, composer Edo Van Breemen (also Canadian!) delivers a score (available for pre-order on vinyl) very low-key, but which repeats when most needed, and exits just as abruptly to put us into the right headspace. Just as in The Monkey, Perkins’s ear for music is top-notch –- Sam Cooke reappears, but Mickey & Sylvia and Elvis Bishop also spotlight in ways it’s a spoiler to detail about. But the thesis piece of the picture is seemingly Peggy Lee’s I Don’t Want to Play In Your Yard, which is played enough times to deepen its thematic resonance each time, in a different way, before being taken up by both Maslany and Sutherland’s characters in hummed reprises like Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight -– or, more appropriately to the genre, Elias Koteas in Gregory Hoblit’s Fallen. They haunt like Mitchum crooning in a Charles Laughton film.
Even the editing takes you along on the haunt, like eddies of water spilling into a river –- in fact, water and the river wind up being emphasised to a remarkable degree in this picture, and the montage work by Graham Fortin and Greg Ng can’t be compared to anything except the sort of virtuoso double-exposure-cross-fades that the silent masters used to do -– the first example to pop into my head being Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt, from 1927. One such fade-in early on, depicting the river swirling under Maslany as she relaxes in a tub, is easily the most extraordinary cinematic effect I’ve seen in a picture this year – it’s what I wish filmmakers were doing more often, these days.
All in All
Now, do all things make logical sense in the film? Do they need to? No;. no, not every film needs to, and, oftentimes, emotional logic can drive a plot better -– more convincingly. If things confuse you for a moment, the emotional quality of the way things unfold renders in perfect sense. It’s a dark fairy tale, a Grimm tale of women and men and the lies and lives they play out.
It’s also a little masterpiece -– not as big or boisterous as The Monkey, nor as much of a slow burn as Longlegs, but a gorgeous tone-poem painted with such care over such a short time that you can’t help but marvel. It’s easily one of the best pictures you might see this year. And it’s to Tatiana Maslany’s credit and genius that she took the opportunity to work with Osgood Perkins on this.
Now… take it as it comes to you. I promise you you won’t be disappointed.
