Keeper (2025) review

Publication Date: 11-23-2025

Dir. Osgood “Oz” Perkins

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★½

Osgood Perkins has been on an enviable heater for the last year and a half, churning out some of the most macabre and memorable horror flicks in recent memory. Such prolificity is both admirable and dangerous. Finally, Perkins’ tireless zeal has caught up with him. Not only is Keeper far and away his worst movie, it’s among the worst of the year.

Perkins — the son of legendary Hollywood actor Anthony Perkins of Psycho fame — kicked off his directorial career with The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, two films that have only gotten more exposure since he later established himself with films like last summer’s runaway hit Longlegs and this year’s bloody hilarious The Monkey. The latter two were both vicious, full of dread, yet oddly funny, with strong themes regarding parental shortcomings and the randomness of death, respectively. Look up what happened to Perkins’ own parents and you’ll begin to see how and why the lines of tragedy and black humor often blur in his works.

Startlingly soulless, underwritten to the point of being weightless, and centered around two characters with the personalities of dish-towels, Keeper begins like all questionable horror movies: with a couple headed off to a cabin in the woods. By this point in time, any horror movie that results in a pair of characters going to a remote home in the middle of nowhere begs a good explanation. Such a qualifier doesn’t exist in Keeper, along with a surplus of other things that would make a good movie.

The couple is Liz (Tatiana Maslany of The Monkey) and Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland). She’s a painter. He’s a doctor. Together, they are a mismatched couple defined by blank stares and pithy, unrealistic conversations that would lead you to believe these two have never even been on a first date together. As the lovemaking begins, Malcolm implores Liz to eat a slice of chocolate cake, despite her vocal aversion to chocolate. No less, she eats it, and doesn’t bother to ask why Malcolm doesn’t have a slice himself. Shocker, she begins hallucinating. Eventually, Malcolm departs the cabin to take care of a patient, leaving Liz by herself. Next door is Malcolm’s cousin (Birkett Turton) and his latest piece-of-ass (Eden Weiss), both of whom non-characters with little relevance other than to be the culprit of two separate jump-scares.

Nick Lepard’s script — which I’m convinced was more of an outline — tethers us to nothing. Much of the film is Liz wandering the home by herself; an ugly, angular structure with narrow halls, canted ceilings, and a bizarre quantity of nooks and crannies. Interior design by Stevie Wonder. Malcolm’s cousin drops by with a bottle of scotch, does some wandering of his own, and eventually vanishes. She calls her friend, gets in a fight; later, she begs her to come pick her up, but her cell phone signal conveniently fails. This is the bulk of Keeper, so committed to a lack of human interest and plot progression that it effectively dulls anything interesting Jeremy Cox is attempting in the photography department. The occasional saving grace is the soundtrack. Perkins has proven that he knows how to pick music for his films, and his most successful needle-drop is the final one, as the credits (mercifully) roll.

Lepard’s writing is so cagey, it brews frustration, not intrigue. Maslany and Sutherland are performers both with strong track records, but the script robs them of any humanity. They’re individuals devoid of charisma and chemistry; had Sutherland’s Malcolm had a shred of suaveness to him, we could see why Liz would trust being whist away to a remote cabin she never knew he owned.

Because this premise is so thin and flimsy, when the third act delivers frightening images and disturbing characters at blunt force, it’s as if Lepard and Perkins forgot they were making a horror film and had to act swiftly. So much of Keeper is nothing but aimless plodding, so ideas like the cycle of abuse are left severely undercooked. To say the film leaves you wanting is putting it mildly. It leaves you craving anything of substance.

I think I’ve discovered why Keeper is a stunningly slapdash effort from an otherwise proven artist. It was conceptualized, written, and filmed amidst the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes. In order to keep the cast of The Monkey working and receiving a paycheck, Perkins and producer Chris Ferguson fast-tracked Keeper into production, hiring Canadian actors and writer (Lepard) to bypass SAG-AFTRA compliance. The effort to keep his friends compensated is admirable. The end product is drivel; a misfire so off-target that it couldn’t hit the ocean if it were facing the Pacific. Osbad.

NOTE: Take a listen to my interview with Osgood Perkins, where we discuss The Monkey, Longlegs, Gretel & Hansel, and more!