The LONGLEGS director continues to serve up copious amounts of terror.
Keeper is Osgood Perkins having fun, and as a filmmaker who nurtures his dark side, that means we are in for some incredibly twisted shit. Perkins found a solid creative team on the set of Longlegs and was eager to work with them all again immediately. Dangerous Animals writer Nick Lepard conjured up the Keeper script, and Perkins and Co. headed off to a cabin to create this latest nightmare. The way Perkins describes it, they were sort of making it up as they went, allowing for a truly collaborative process. Which makes sense considering that even though Perkins didn't pen this one, it still feels deeply personal — a hallmark of his filmography to date.
Keeper follows a new couple on their first away trip together. What initially feels like all the trappings of a classic rom-com setup descends into folk horror and psychedelic weirdness, culminating in an ultimately dark fairytale.
KEEPER (Credit: Neon)
You don't even have to be paying very close attention to the cinematic landscape as of late to be aware of Perkins' success in the horror space over the last two years in particular. After making his feature directorial debut in 2015 with
, Perkins has absolutely dominated 2024 and 2025, with
Longlegs
and
The
Monkey
becoming massive hits with both fans and the box office. With
Keeper
set to hit theaters this November, Oz is already on another set to bring us his next feature,
The Young People
.
At this point, it's safe to say Perkins is a master of his craft. The single location horror Keeper allows that craft to shine by roughly creating the boundaries of the sandbox before fully unleashing Perkins in it. In a story built on relationship horror, where we fear we aren't getting the full picture of our characters, Perkins obscures parts of the frame, creating an unsettling visual echo of concealing something and not quite giving us the whole picture, weaving in doubt and unease. In a montage of women, one shot dissolves into another as the eyes remain in the same place in the frame, solidifying a connection between them. Another mystery I'm looking forward to unpacking.
But the woman at the center of this cabin in the woods nightmare is Liz, played by The Monkey's Tatiana Maslaney. Perkins relayed during a sneak peek Q&A that he called Maslaney and invited her to come along on this journey, with full disclosure that they were creating as they went. “I'll meet you on the set every day, and we can sort of figure it out and talk about what we think it might be. If you're up for inventing this together, then you should come and play with us.”
Lucky for us, Maslaney was game and an integral part of crafting Liz's journey, not just as a performer but also as a collaborator. “When you get someone like Tatiana, she has this unbelievable multidimensional way of looking at things, which wouldn't have met my two-dimensional way of looking at things. We ended up with something pretty textured, pretty deep. But that's her fault, not mine.”
KEEPER (Credit: Neon)
Maslaney is always impressive, and from what I've seen, Keeper will really give her the chance to put a wide spectrum on display, from exuding a strong, quiet confidence to nearly breaking and desperate (and likely back again). Maslaney is the kind of actor who can do so much with very little—a raise of an eyebrow, the softening of a smile. As much as Keeper sounds like a sandbox for Oz to play in, it very much seems it was a contained and safe space for everyone involved to be creative and experimental in ways that are not always possible.
If you've seen the Keeper trailer, you undoubtedly clocked a black-eyed, strange-looking creature with primordial goo dripping from its open mouth, frozen in a scream. I'm not sure how we get there, but the mystery of Keeper is part of the fun, and I know Perkins has one hell of a journey in store for us, with new horrors waiting to be discovered in those woods.
Perkins has proven he is adept at crafting nightmares by thrusting the audience into a prolonged and relentlessly mounting sense of dread. The man keeps the blueprints to our nightmares in his back pocket, weaponizing them to wonderful effect. Keeper certainly seems teed up to deliver a dark trip indeed.
Keeper is only in theaters November 14. In the meantime, you can watch the Keeper trailer below and start to form some of your own theories!
