From the supernatural serial killer thriller of Longlegs to the over-the-top dark comedy of this year’s The Monkey, director Osgood Perkins has been cranking out different types of horror like nobody’s business. His newest movie is Keeper, a surrealist horror film about a couple heading to a secluded cabin for their anniversary weekend, where a […] The post Keeper Review: Osgood Perkins’ New Horror Movie Is a Major Step Down appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
From the supernatural serial killer thriller of Longlegs to the over-the-top dark comedy of this year’s The Monkey, director Osgood Perkins has been cranking out different types of horror like nobody’s business. His newest movie is Keeper, a surrealist horror film about a couple heading to a secluded cabin for their anniversary weekend, where a haunting occurs. As much as I’ve enjoyed Perkins’s most recent movies, this is a major step down for him.
When the film started, I was invested. There are some creepy shots of women covered in blood shrieking at the top of their lungs, some unconventional shot framing, and a shot that almost feels like a point-of-view shot. So now here’s the million-dollar question: what is the source of the horror? What should I be scared of? Keeper has virtually no clue what the answer to that question is for the majority of the runtime.
Early on, Liz (Tatiana Maslany) is in a bath, and on the foggy window behind her, unbeknownst to her, a handprint appears from an invisible source. We have some dreams and shots of screaming women here and there. At some point, she mentions she doesn’t like chocolate, but when nobody sees, she starts shoving her face with chocolate cake like the kid in Matilda. What is going on here? What the hell is happening?
At some point in the film, a character is in the woods and they are attacked by what appears to be a creature. Got it, this is a creature feature set in the woods! Only…it’s not. The creatures aren’t really part of this movie. So what else is happening that’s scary? Liz starts drawing the screaming women she’s having dreams/visions about. And…yeah, there isn’t anything scary about what’s going on here.
I mean, the setting is exactly what you’d expect from a horror movie. A secluded cabin in the middle of the woods is where any great horror can happen. You’re far away from help, and nobody can hear you. But what does the script do with this? It’s trying to do everything and ends up doing almost nothing. If the source of the supernatural horror isn’t clear yet, they should at least be pulling drama out of the two lead characters, Liz and Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland).
But they’re not! Liz and Malcolm are two really boring characters who we know very little about. There’s room for something interesting in there, as they’ve been dating for a little while. A romantic relationship can easily unravel when these two are trapped alone together in one place. The possibilities are limitless, and Keeper does nothing with them. I couldn’t even grasp what was going on with the protagonist, Liz. Maslany’s performance here is all over the place; sometimes, she’s very grounded and relatable and human, and other times, she’s a complete enigma, shoving cake into her face and acting so eccentric and strange that I couldn’t tell what was going on with her.
We have two characters whom I don’t have a grasp of in a story that’s completely disjointed. Everything feels so vague. The threat is vague, the characters are vague—you can’t really make sense of what’s going on for a while. Of course, many great horror movies have mysteries at the center. You’re not supposed to know everything that’s going on at first; you’re supposed to ask questions that get answered later. This movie asks so many questions that I could barely keep up. At some point, all I was doing was questioning everything because Keeper is going for so many different types of horror. There’s a sequence where a neighbor enters while Liz is home alone, and it’s pulling tension from that, escalating and escalating till it just deflates like a balloon.
What are you, Keeper? Are you a home invasion thriller? A creature feature in the secluded woods? A ghost movie? A commentary on romantic relationships? With all the confounding questions this movie asks, at some point, you lose interest in the answer. It won’t pick one concept and stick with it. It’s just throwing horror ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. Hey, what if that scary painting came to life and crept up behind Liz? What if Liz just starts getting visions of people in her living room? Let’s try it all out! Why not?
In the final act, Keeper finally begins to answer some questions. We get our reveal about what it all meant. There is genuinely some nightmarish imagery in that final act. The whole movie is well-shot, so credit where credit is due. But at some point, it’s too little, too late. To this day, I still could not tell you what the handprint on the glass at the beginning of the movie was about. It feels like one of those scares in horror movies that’s meant to scare the audience, rather than making logical sense within the story. Because when the reveal happens, it never reveals why there was a handprint on the glass. Overall, Keeper is a frustrating movie with underdeveloped characters. Perkins has a vague grasp on what he’s trying to do and say, but Keeper winds up doing way too much that just doesn’t add up to something worth watching.
SCORE: 3/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 3 equates to “Bad.” Due to significant issues, this media feels like a chore to take in.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our Keeper review.
The post Keeper Review: Osgood Perkins’ New Horror Movie Is a Major Step Down appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
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