Studio:   Neon
Director: Osgood Perkins
Writer:   Nick Lepard
Producer: Chris Ferguson, Jesse Savath
Stars:    Tatiana Maslany, Rossif Sutherland, Birkett Turton, Eden Weiss

Review Score:

Summary:

A cabin getaway spirals into an unnerving experience for a woman who uncovers a dark secret related to her boyfriend.

Synopsis:

One year into their relationship, bohemian artist Liz agrees to a weekend getaway with her boyfriend, Dr. Malcolm Westbridge, at his family’s cabin in the woods. Upon arriving, Liz notices a strange cakebox with what appears to be a bloody handprint on it, which Malcolm claims was left by “the caretakers.”

Malcolm prepares a romantic dinner for Liz that gets interrupted by his abrasive cousin Darren, who lives in the cabin next door, and Darren’s date Minka, a model who speaks broken English. After being casually condescending toward Liz, Darren pulls Malcolm aside for a private conversation. Left alone with Liz, Minka sees the cake and mentions, “It tastes like sh*t.” Darren leaves abruptly after announcing that Liz is “a keeper.”

Darren’s odd visit spurs a conversation between Liz and Malcolm about superficiality. Reconciling the issue, Liz and Malcolm start getting intimate, but Malcolm pauses to offer Liz cake. Although she reminds him she doesn’t like chocolate, Liz eats a slice of cake at Darren’s insistence anyway.

Woken from a dark dream about a bloodied woman with a gun pointed at her head, Liz is drawn to the kitchen where she inspects the cake. Liz finds severed fingers inside the cake, yet she hungrily eats the entire thing. Liz soon starts having visions of women in different eras being traumatized by an unseen paramour with murderous intentions.

The following morning, Minka tries calling for a rideshare while walking alone through the forest. Something attacks Minka and drags her body up into a tree. Meanwhile, Liz finds a locket in a river as she continues having strange visions.

Malcolm informs Liz he has supposedly been called back to his hospital in the city to tend to a comatose patient. Malcolm gets tearful about leaving Liz, who also sheds tears over Malcolm leaving her alone.

While on the phone with her friend Maggie, who warns Liz she is probably a married man’s sidepiece that shouldn’t be a kept woman in a house, Liz spies a furtive figure on Darren’s roof next door. Liz gets spooked again when she also spies a woman’s head in a garbage bag, although it quickly vanishes.

During a nap, Liz encounters Minka in a dream. Speaking cryptically, Minka references “the children” and claims Liz is “their mother.” Liz sees a brief flash of the woman from her previous dream, connecting her to the locket she now wears.

Darren unexpectedly comes to the cabin. Surprised to see Liz and not Malcolm, Darren insists on coming inside to drink celebratory scotch. Uncomfortable with his presence, Liz retreats to the bathroom to consider what to do next. While in there, Liz hears strange noises all over the house. Darren retrieves a meat cleaver to hunt for the source of the sounds, but he is killed by something unseen.

After reemerging from the bathroom, Liz finds Malcolm missing, his scotch left on a counter, and his gold watch inside the garbage disposal. Liz’s confusion becomes fear upon seeing a vision of a creepy woman with a bag over her head. The baghead disappears but leaves behind a new cakebox smeared with a heart symbol Liz drew on a window earlier.

Frightened, Liz calls her friend Maggie to come get her. The call cuts out before Liz can confirm a pickup. A supernatural figure with an elongated neck briefly appears behind Liz.

Malcolm returns home, expressing surprise to see Liz. Upset over everything she experienced, Liz insists on leaving immediately, but Malcolm eventually convinces her to stay.

As their interactions continue, Liz becomes increasingly suspicious of Malcolm’s behavior. Retreating to the bathroom once again, Liz finds an old photograph of Malcolm with a woman and two children. Believing he has a second life, Liz again demands to leave, but Malcolm says he can’t let her.

Malcolm tells Liz she was only meant to eat a bite of the cake to be knocked out, not eat the whole thing. He also tells Liz that the entities she has been seeing aren’t actually women, although he doesn’t know exactly what they are.

Malcolm explains that when they were teenagers 200 years ago, he and Darren found a strange pregnant woman dancing in the moonlight by the river where Liz found her locket. Seeing the woman, whom Liz uncannily resembles, as a trespasser on his father’s land, Malcolm shot her in the leg and imprisoned her in a pigpen where she gave birth to the creatures. Malcolm then executed the woman by shooting her in her forehead.

Malcolm likens the creatures to a fairytale about magical fish capable of granting wishes. In exchange for eternal life, he and Darren seduce women for sacrifice so the creatures can feed. Malcolm adds that even though he supposedly loves her, Liz is going to die so he can live a little longer.

With the doors and windows inexplicably locked, Liz tries escaping the cabin by climbing out to the roof during a rainstorm. Frightened by creatures that confront her, Liz falls into a pool of water where she experiences more visions of the woman she resembles.

Malcolm puts Liz’s belongings into a box that he adds to a collection of mementos from previous victims. Later, Malcolm begins coughing violently as he notices himself aging rapidly.

Liz recovers in the cellar to find herself surrounded by crawling creatures and bagheads. One of the creatures pulls the decapitated head of their mother from 200 years ago from a large jar containing a honey-like substance. Before removing her mask to reveal a head with multiple faces, a baghead identifies herself and the other creatures as “all the other women that came before” as well as Liz’s “children.” Liz laughs as the creatures swarm her.

Malcolm wakes the next day to find he transformed into an old man who now hangs upside down from a tree in the forest. Her eyes glowing like the creatures, Liz approaches to forcibly feed Malcolm a bite of cake. Ignoring Malcolm’s pleas and protestations that he loves her, Liz leaves after lowering Malcolm until his head is submerged in the large honey jar.

Review:

Practically everyone knows someone who has been in Liz’s situation. Perhaps they’ve been in her position themselves. Taking the clay of basic bohemian stereotyping she’s given by a straightforward script, Tatiana Maslany rescues Liz, and director Osgood Perkins’s “Keeper,” from cliched characterizations with subtleties in inflection and expression, revealing this woman’s relatable backstory by timing her eyes and dialogue delivery to almost invisibly alter specific words.

One year into her current relationship, you can see in her face and hear in her voice that Liz still isn’t fully sold on Malcolm, a man whose idea for a romantic getaway involves a secluded cabin in the woods, where something awful is guaranteed to happen in a horror movie or your money back. Maggie, the obligatory phone-a-friend Liz can bounce exposition off of, laughs at the outrageous image of “a city subway rat” like Liz spending a weekend in the country. Maggie also has a snicker for the beige cardigan, a symbol of anonymous simplicity if ever there was one, that Malcolm gifted Liz, a free-spirited artist with far more fashion sense than that, for their trip.

When Maggie asks if she’s happy, Liz replies, “Yeah,” not with heart-eyed enthusiasm yet not like a completely automated Stepford wife either. This is a person caught in between emotions, uncertain of her true feelings, convincing herself contentment equates to completeness.

We don’t know much about her man Malcolm to begin with. Then again, it seems neither does Liz. He’s ideal in that he’s a doctor, outwardly non-threatening, essentially a “safe” choice for a reliable, if milquetoast, object of affection.

Liz’s first clue that “ordinary” will be off the table this weekend comes from a curious cakebox left in their cabin. She can’t stop staring at the brown-blooded handprint smudging the box, which Malcolm claims must have been put there by “the caretakers” of his family’s forest property.

Clue #2 comes courtesy of Darren, Malcolm’s abrasive cousin who lives in the cabin next door. Interrupting the couple’s romantic dinner with his brusque bravado, Darren barges in with a fur-clad Eastern European model attached to his arm, two peas in one more pod pulled from the trope tree.

“Keeper’s” themes are obvious from the beginning, and should be obvious now, even though this recap hasn’t advanced past Act One yet. By electing to eschew subtext in favor of a frightening Aesop’s fable about coupling dynamics, “Keeper’s” plotting is predictable. But even reduced to a psychological portrait of one woman’s descent into a harrowing supernatural experience, Maslany singlehandedly rejuvenates the sagging story by treating semi-silly material with charismatic conviction.

Maslany puts more layers on Liz the more her character gets cowed into corners. Darren in particular gets suspiciously insistent, first by talking his way into the house while Malcolm is away, then convincing Liz to swig celebratory scotch after she’s already said no. Malcolm does this too. When the horrors Liz glimpses reach new heights of hysteria, Malcolm administers verbal valium, calming Liz with platitudes and wine until her urge to leave subsides. Through it all though, Liz rarely loses all her agency, ultimately evolving into a woman whose conditioning for polite society violently clashes with liberating instincts.

“Keeper” loses some strength in its pull when the focus fades on Liz’s frantic scramble to figure out why she’s seeing strange sights like crawling creatures and dead women with bags over their heads. Once the movie’s mystique dissipates for a clearer view of what’s going on, complete with a villain’s vanilla motivation accompanying an explanatory flashback, “Keeper” melts into a “Tales from the Crypt”-type fairytale more concerned with ghoulish monsters and illogical lore than continuing to shine the spotlight where it matters most: Liz.

Osgood Perkins and company reportedly conceived and then shot “Keeper” in Canada while production paused on his previous film “The Monkey” (review here) during Hollywood’s 2023 labor disputes. It shows. Not that the film necessarily feels rushed or haphazard. Speaking less like a choosy critic and more informally in tone, one might describe “Keeper” as “pretty decent” for a slow-burn thriller with a bite of bizarreness. The movie has the texture of a project put together with passion, just not the long-term investment of a creator’s beloved pride and joy.

For Perkins, future projects will still be promoted as being “From the director of ‘Longlegs’ (review here)” rather than the director of “Keeper,” a mid-tier movie poised to drop additional rungs as his growing filmography expands its ladder. “Keeper” is more of a movie meant to highlight Tatiana Maslany’s talent anyway, and that is where the film sees its greatest success. Even when the narrative mires itself in the mud of overexplained mythology and underdeveloped ancillary characters, Maslany makes sure Liz remains compelling enough to lift the premise higher than its plainness might otherwise allow.

Review Score: 65

Nov 26, 2025

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