Keeper Review: Neon’s Latest Horror Is a Loser Which Delays Gratification Indefinitely

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Before the release of Osgood Perkins’ latest film, his third in just over a year, the distributor, Neon, made a strange decision: they wouldn’t show it to critics beforehand. They claimed this was to maintain suspense, but it seemed more like a tactic to create buzz – either a clever way to get people talking, or a desperate attempt to convince everyone the film was good when they actually knew it wasn’t.

The film’s secretive nature actually reflects the movie itself, which deliberately holds back information for as long as possible, right up until the very end. Keeper feels like a puzzle box filled with increasingly ridiculous twists, and suggests the director may have rushed production to meet a tight schedule. It’s full of strange moments and tricks, feeling more like a collection of random ideas than a carefully crafted story. Nothing connects in a meaningful way, and it fails to evoke genuine emotion. Despite hinting at a big reveal, the film doesn’t deliver a shocking secret – unless you’re surprised by the overall lack of quality. Even then, it’s hard to say it’s truly shocking.

Don’t blame Tatiana Maslany, the incredibly talented actor who carries the show Orphan Black. She manages to make this confusing story feel grounded and believable. Playing Liz, a visual artist who feels more at home in the city than in the wilderness, Maslany portrays a character who is both strong and fragile, reserved yet easily hurt. Her performance is far better than the script deserves.

Nothing Is Worth The Wait In This Tedious Drama

Okay, so the movie starts with Liz and her boyfriend Malcolm celebrating their anniversary at his cabin. Right away, something feels off with them, you know? Their conversations don’t flow naturally, and I got the sense Liz was maybe a little freaked out by how perfect everything seemed. Malcolm’s a doctor – handsome, successful, the whole deal. He’s clearly into Liz and really supports her art; they actually met because he bought one of her paintings. It’s all a bit…too good to be true, honestly, and that’s what grabbed my attention.

Liz begins to unravel, disturbed by the stillness of the countryside and a strange chocolate cake left by the house’s caretaker. She’s plagued by vivid dreams set in the 1800s, experiences frightening hallucinations—like seeing a severed head—and one night obsessively draws disturbing faces. Their quiet dinner is interrupted when Malcolm’s cousin and neighbor, Darren, arrives with his girlfriend, Minka. While Darren pulls Malcolm aside for a private chat, Minka cryptically warns Liz that the cake tastes awful.

Things are already strange, but they take a turn for the worse when the doctor has to rush back to the city to check on a patient who isn’t recovering as expected from a coma. Malcolm seems to be hiding something, and Liz suspects it, but neither of them addresses it directly. Despite everything, Liz tries to fit in and pretend things are normal, even as increasingly strange events unfold around her.

The movie struggles to escape its own strangeness, and even when things are revealed, they don’t really clarify what happened before. The biggest problem is that any deeper meaning the director was aiming for is lost in all the quirkiness. While you could maybe interpret it as a story about men easily using women to gain power, it’s a very difficult connection to make.

The film’s strongest moments come from Maslany’s incredible performance, but it doesn’t quite capture the eerie mood of Longlegs or the wild energy of The Monkey – and even those films weren’t entirely clear in their storytelling. The director seems torn between creating a spooky atmosphere and trying to deliver a meaningful message, and honestly, if the big reveal is simply that relationships are hard, I wish they’d just said that from the beginning. Liz probably would have appreciated that too – it could have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

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2025-11-15 04:38