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Not a Keeper

Keeper is a movie that was entirely written, produced, and shot in a period of about five months while production on The Monkey was on hold due to the 2023 Hollywood labour strikes, and it shows. Essentially it was an excuse to keep the predominantly Canadian crew working during this time, director Osgood Perkins also hiring a non-WGA Canadian writer Nick Lepard to draft the screenplay and casting the film with Canadian actors such as Tatiana Maslany -who could perform in it under her ACTRA membership while temporarily waiving her SAG-AFTRA status. A bit of a sneaky way around the labour dispute for Perkins, but it did allow his crew in Canada to not lose work -which is nice for them. It doesn’t make the movie they were working on any better though.
Unsurprisingly for a film that was designed as a rush job, the premise is incredibly basic. Maslany stars as Liz, a woman celebrating her anniversary with her partner Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland), a fairly wealthy and successful doctor, by spending a weekend in his isolated cabin in the woods -not a particularly nice or scenic cabin, but it has been in his family for generations. Other obligations keep pulling him away though and in the solitude Liz begins experiencing a series of strange occurrences and visions of the creeping supernatural variety.
There is no real indication what exactly the horror is for most of the movie, apart from just a variety of scary things happening. We see a heart get outlined in the steam on the window while Liz is taking a bath, suggesting a ghost or spirit, but later a character out in the woods clearly gets attacked by a corporeal monster. A vision appears to Liz of a friend and her miniature doppelganger coming at her viscerally close and wide-eyed with cryptic warnings, and also some kind of animal moving in the shadows behind her. Occasionally Perkins happens on a good way of showcasing these scares, like filming at a new angle or bringing into focus something inconspicuous in a frame, but there is no real reason for it -not even any clues that Liz is able to glean. She finds a button or a piece of an old pendant in the nearby creek, but it doesn’t elucidate anything for her -nor is she particularly interested in these mysteries, largely brushing them off as she awaits the return of Malcolm and stumbles into secrets about their relationship, namely that he is actually married and has managed to keep it from her for a full year. Liz is merely the “other woman.”
Maslany has a hard time with this movie, and not just in that her character is put through a psychological ringer. She genuinely plays certain aspects of her fear very well, but her performance struggles through sequences of badly written confusion -such as when the whole situation is finally being spelt out to her and she has to keeping guessing at and disbelieving and “what do you mean”-ing it. Sutherland fares marginally better for his screen-time, though it is Eden Weiss who probably leaves the biggest impression as the frightful Minka. But nobody seems to really understand the work they are giving, and even with eventual supernatural explanations meant to enrich a few of these characters and what they represent they just aren’t very compelling. A scene in which Liz  devours a chocolate cake in the middle of the night that she previously claimed she hated doesn’t reveal any more interesting facet to her character, and is in fact ultimately a rather meaningless bit of eeriness that doesn’t relate to any haunting feature to her person. It is overlaid with several images of women’s faces in anguish though.
One of several instances in the film in which Perkins employs abstract enigmatic imagery or haunting insinuation to distort reality or contribute to a sense of unease. And he can be quite good at that, as demonstrated in Longlegs. He does this a lot through juxtaposed images and a few unusual camera angles, and while they can be evocative, they aren't so exceptional as to have any greater significance than novelty. And their thematic relevance can be fairly lacklustre as well. In one instance near the end it gets a little tiresome how long a shot stays upside down, and the inserts of water or an intangible thicker liquid, though curious initially, are ultimately so menial. As too are the flashes to the faces of tortured women, suggesting the pattern of Liz's experience. There is some mild shock to be had there, these minuscule beats acting as jump scares from time to time, but it is all mere texture that does nothing to raise the movie out of its banal narrative doldrums.
And Perkins is quite capable of genuine creepiness in this film -bringing a lot of his better tendencies out in the last act. His phenomena when they are revealed are quite disturbing and frightful in design, made the more so by the grim manner and pace of their introduction. One great though baffling effect here manages to be simultaneously absurd and terrifying -largely there just for its own novelty. Perkins understands well how to realize nightmares and this movie is no exception in that regard. But by the time these horror sources manifest themselves to their creepiest degree, they don't pack a punch beyond their mere aesthetic, even with Maslany's efforts to sell the terror of her situation. Even the best bits of isolated horror need engagement in order to be effective. That's the critical ingredient missing through this movie.
There is a mild double-meaning to the title Keeper -neither of which justifies how generic it is; and the movie is about as interesting as that title would indicate. Perkins is still an effective horror director with a particular affinity for chilling terror and strong imagery. But these instincts need a firmer bedrock of support -none of his last three films have stood out much on their storytelling, and this one the least of all. Perhaps Perkins should be applauded for what this movie was practically in service of -its cast and crew owe him a lot. But its' dimness overpowers any qualities that could otherwise save it. It is assuredly not a keeper. 

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