Keeper review
You can go ahead and throw this one back.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers
Keeper
Directed by Osgood Perkins
Written by Nick Lepard
Starring Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland
Keeper Review
Osgood Perkins is back for his second movie of 2025…and his third in the last sixteen months. With the release of Keeper, we can officially call this run of rapid-fire feature presentations a series of diminishing returns. Longlegs was an excellent movie that found its way into our 2024 Top Ten list. The Monkey is a very good movie in contention to make this year’s list. Keeper is…not on either one’s level. That’s a kind way of saying that it isn’t a good movie. Which is a kind way of saying it’s a bad movie. It’s not terrible or anything…talented directors generally have a fairly solid floor to their output. Keeper lays on that floor waiting to finally do something with its story. The good news is that it eventually does. The bad news is that it’s a wild swing that doesn’t connect.
Liz (Tatiana Maslany) joins her boyfriend Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at his family’s cabin in the woods to celebrate their 1 year anniversary. Some strange things occasionally happen…especially when Malcolm is called away for work and Liz is left in the house alone.
That’s it. That’s the plot of Keeper. If you’ve seen the advertising for Keeper, you may have noticed that it does a good job hiding what the movie is actually about. We love advertising that doesn’t give things away. Having now seen the movie…there really wasn’t anything that could have been advertised. At least not without giving away the wacky resolution of a story that mostly feels like it’s going nowhere. The trailer for Keeper hints at doubts in a relationship that is becoming serious…explored from two perspectives. While there is some of the former…there is none of the latter. This is Liz’s story and while she does question her relationship with Malcolm…it really isn’t that big of a deal for most of the story.
In fact, nothing is that big of a deal for most of the story. The first hour or so of Keeper is a forgettable series of scenes. Perkins often tells stories at a purposely slow pace. He does so here…only there isn’t much of a story to tell. Until the climax, that is. We can’t talk about any of that without going into spoiler territory. What I can tell you is that Keeper’s final act is incredibly weird in what could have been a fun way if the first hour hadn’t lulled you to sleep first. There is probably a version of this that works better. One where the first two acts effectively builds to Keeper’s off-kilter finale. Instead…you sit and wonder what the point of any of this is…until it tells you and you kind of shrug and say “well…that’s weird”. Weird is good but I can’t imagine that is the reaction that Perkins was going for.
Tatiana Maslany is very good here. She gets everything she can out of a story that spends far too much time giving her nothing to work with. Liz feels (rightfully) annoyed with that herself. It makes her an easy character to connect with…and the Rossif Sutherland does a good job keeping how you’re supposed to feel about Malcolm out of reach. His performance works for where Keeper is heading…but the intentional ambiguity only adds to the tedium getting there.
Keeper is the tale of two movies. One is boring and fails to effectively hint at where things are heading. The second is far more interesting…but feels so disconnected to what came before that it had to be on purpose. I can’t tell you why anyone would choose to crawl towards a wild swing…but after watching Keeper I can tell you that doing so doesn’t work very well. Keeper is the rare movie where I think you can skip to the third act and be just fine watching through to the end. It might even help. Fans of weird things will find things to like in that final act. They aren’t likely to enjoy what it takes to get there.
Scare Value
Keeper is a weird movie…as is its intent. The weirdness feels strangely unearned, however. Although there is a pretty bold swing in the last act…the swing fails to mesh with the slow burn that precedes it. The result is an uneven movie that doesn’t feel worth the ride to get where it is eventually going. Perkins slow plays things, as is his way. It doesn’t fit the material as well as it has in some other projects. Maslany is great. Unfortunately, she’s stuck in a story that isn’t as interesting as it seems to think it is.
2/5
Keeper Link
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Thank you for the review I could read with out getting a word for word dialog of the film, to many reviews are really written out scripting and not reviewing the film. I want to know how the film made you feel, and think.
Your review is refreshing…