Liz is pretty excited to go on a weekend trip to Malcolm Westbridge’s cabin. Kind of, because though she’s pretty sure he loves him, he seems too good to be true. Her girlfriend Maggie is a fly in the ointment, telling her there’s got to be something there. Something Liz doesn’t know about.
Buy KeeperBut they go to the cabin, and it seems nice, even though there are no blinds in the windows and the neighbor’s cabin is right outside. But that neighbor is Malcolm’s cousin Darren. The “asshole” cousin, who shouldn’t be up that weekend. However, he is, and he brings some Eastern European model who ruins the whole cozy vibe of the evening. Liz is distressed by it, wondering if this is just the place the Westbridge boys bring their sidepieces to get them out of the city.
Malcom reassures her, kind of… and then things get weird. And the weird is where Keeper becomes difficult to review, because the power of the story comes in the surprises that unfold. Liz starts having strange visions and is visited by weird women. She doesn’t know if this is her paranoia or if something truly nefarious is happening to her.
Again, I don’t want to get too far into that lest I reveal some of the interesting weirdness that is Keeper’s best aspect. The story is odd, genuinely so. It commits to its oddness with some genuinely startling visuals in the last act that I really loved.
So, too, do I like Osgood Perkins direction. His compositional and visual storytelling here is masterful. Using essentially one location complemented with some trips outdoors into the woods, he creates an entire isolated world in this cabin trip. Liz, who is beginning to feel uneasy at the cabin, is rarely shown in a scene where she is not confined by some framing device. It can be a window, the crisscrossing of the banisters on the stairs, counters and tabletops, but almost anywhere this woman goes, she’s being hemmed in by something visually.
As a horror film, it has some of the usual caveats. Some scenes, the scary things seem to be acting for the audience’s benefit. You have something cool to look at, even if it’s a little forced. There’s a special cake Liz is meant to eat, which we infer contains hallucinogens which can excuse some visuals that otherwise don’t make physical sense.
I have one big criticism I can lay on the film. Though it’s expertly filmed and I was thoroughly entertained throughout, the argument could be made there is not enough story for a feature film. It could be told in about 30 minutes and have a similar impact… but nobody sees short films.
What makes Keeper work is the persistent tension, which is anchored in Tatiana Maslany’s performance as Liz. She’s not happy at the cabin, not happy with the intrusion of the cousin. But she really wants to like Malcolm, sometimes despite her best judgment. Rossif Sutherland (another one of Donald Sutherland’s sons) gives a performance whose odd tentativeness pays off in the end.
Looking at IMDB and the aggregators, Keeper doesn’t seem to be particularly well received. I didn’t follow its release, haven’t read those reviews, and came into this viewing blind. I found an arresting and intriguing horror film. Perhaps the story is stretched a bit thin but it pays off mightily at the end. That and the very high quality of the visual direction make it a complete recommendation from me.
Keeper has been released by Neon on 4K UDH and Blu-ray. Extras include a commentary by the director, a teaser, and a trailer.
