For a director who started out his directorial output as slow and measured as the plots of his films, Osgood Perkins really has suddenly slammed the throttle down when it comes to the rate he’s throwing out feature films. In case you’d forgotten the Satan meets Silence Of The Lambs stylings of Longlegs only was released in 2024 and the simian silliness of The Monkey debuted at the beginning of this year which is quite a jump from the four year gap between his first three efforts.
Anyway, while Perkins seems to be showing no sign of stopping (he’s currently filming his next outing as we speak), it’s fairly comforting that his string of cinematic bad trips remain firmly routed in the world of slow burn horror, with his newest, Keeper, not only continuing that trend, but slowing it down even further.
Can this fusion of relationship movie and rural horror mamage to hit the same heights of the director’s most recent works, or does Keeper prove to be anything but?
Liz and Malcolm are celebrating their one year anniversary by driving out to his remote cabin in the woods to spend some quality time together despite Liz being a certified city girl. Sure enough, the secluded nature of the place and the deafening quiet initially proves to be a little much for Liz, which certainly doesn’t help the fact that she’s starting to have paranoid thoughts that her relationship may not be quite what she thinks.
Her sense of unease only increases when a string of disconcerting happenings throw off her feelings even more. The surprise introduction of Malcom’s flashier “asshole” cousin, Darren, stirs up her worries about Malcom when he calls by with what seems to be a high class escort in tow and the presence of a strange chocolate cake that’s seemingly been made and left for her by an unseen “caretaker” proves to be only the harbinger for yet more weird shit going on. However, when Malcolm is suddenly called away for a supposedly medical emergency concerning one of his patients, it sends Liz into a spiral that has her seeing and thinking things that work her up into a state of panic.
Realising that she may actually be Malcolm’s side piece as he possibly could be lying just to run back to his family for a few hours isn’t exactly great for her sense of calm, but Liz is also starting to see and hear strange things that are going on both within the cabin and in the woods outside. Weird figures lurking in the corner of the room, a severed head in the trash and a shock appearance of a woman sitting in the kitchen with a plastic bag on her head soon has her questioning everything.
But when Malcolm returns home, she demands some answers from him concerning everything she’s seen and thought over the past few hours, bit when her sheepish partner actually offers up some answers, Liz discovers that while some secrets between couples can be healthy, others can be downright horrific.
Maybe the onslaught of glowing quotes from such other horror luminaries as Guillermo Del Toro, James Wan and Damien Leone set my sights a bit too high, because while there was alot about Keeper I was anxious to… well, keep, I could help but feel that Osgood Oerkins has merely slapped a fresh new coat of his particularly trippy brand of paint on something of an overused trope. Of course, hanging a stark dose of rural horror around the neck of a cabin in the woods movie is a trope that’ll no doubt still exist long after I’m moldering in the ground, but after his two, rather jazzier, previous films saw him extending his filmmaking reach, Keeper sees him going back to his slower and more esoteric early works.
That’s not to say that Perkins has lost his touch. The crawling sense of imposing dread is present as always and the filmmaker proves to be his typical, elusive self as he spins a story that refuses to spell out all the answers as it slowly crawls down it’s winding path. There’s also that wonderful knack of dropping sudden, startling imagery in your lap at a moments notice that successfully jars you out of your seat while never resorting to a cheap sting and Perkins’ hallucinogenic, almost art house, flourishes makes the whole thing play like a fever dream as we softly fade to the babbling brook that runs outside or constantly cut to random women that seemingly come from other times.
However, even as Perkins patiently unfurls his mystery at a languid pace, no amount of startling moments, rock solid performances and mind boggling creature design can distract from the fact that we’ve been here one too many times before and not even a fully immersed turn from Tatiana Maslany can manage to shake basic feeling of over-familiarity – even when we’re being blitzed by nightmarish imagery.
Still, kudos still have to be given to how Perkins manages to whip up his slow burn horrors while not overexplaining himself. Both Maslany and Rossif Sutherland deliver a two-hander of a relationship that’s in that phase where everything starts to solidify and trust is virtually on the verge of becoming a muscle memory. Sutherland’s Malcolm is all warm tones and kindly gestures that still leave room for sinister interpretation, but it’s unsurprisingly Maslany who puts in the more affecting turn as a woman who wants to desperately believe that she’s found herself a keeper. Obviously, like a lot of horror these days, the movie has fun with twinning up fears of infidelity and other such lies with something altogether more sinister, but while the reveal takes some impressively messed-up forms, it still just feels like a surreal paint job of things we’ve seen many times before.
However, while Maslany sells these creeping terrors with the dedication of Shelley Duvall quivering her way through The Shining, it’s still gratifying that the man who gave us the sight of a pale, puffy Nic Cage screaming singing at a child still can bust a supremely ghastly visual when he wants too. While not to give anything away, what lurks in the corners just out of sight prove to be well worth the price of admission. Whether they stand in the background, just out of focus, as their necks stretch to an outlandish length like a creature from Japanese folklore, or they creep down the stairs in silhouette with mist drifting out of their open mouth, they genuinely nail the originality that’s lacking from the basics of the movie while providing moments that will cause you to tighten your grip on your arm rest.
Missing the novelty of Longlegs and the breezy absurdity of The Monkey, we still find that the Osgood Perkins fear train is still chugging away with style. But while Keeper certainly delivers with its creaking trees, misty forests, startling visual and more wood panelling than his last two movies combined, there’s a sense that maybe Perkins could use a bit of a shake up to keep him from growing stale.
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