‘Keeper’ review: Osgood Perkins cabin-in-the-woods chiller is more style than substance

Dir: Osgood Perkins. US. 2025. 1hr 39mins

For his third feature release in 18 months, horror director Osgood Perkins pays a visit to a traditional genre setting – the cabin in the woods. But just as he did with his previous two films Longlegs (about a serial killer) and The Monkey (about a cursed object), Perkins uses this familiar framework to anchor a slow-burn descent into hell, this time following a romantic weekend turning horrifyingly sour. It’s certainly got the Perkins style and plenty of genuine chills, but the journey is more satisfying than the destination.

Should appeal to genre fans 

Opening in the US (via Neon) and UK (Black Bear) on November 14 before rolling out across various international territories, the film should appeal to genre fans attracted by Perkins’ name and an effectively ambiguous marketing campaign. Keeper should do sturdy business in a similar ballpark to The Monkey ($69m worldwide) but is unlikely to replicate the breakout success of Longlegs ($128m worldwide), which featured star names Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe.

The Monkey star Tatiana Maslany (also known for roles in TV shows Orphan Black and She-Hulk: Attorney At Law) is excellent as Liz, a no-nonsense woman who truly believes she has found her soulmate in softly-spoken doctor Malcolm (a nicely reserved Rossif Sutherland). The couple are spending the weekend in Malcolm’s secluded upstate New York cabin – an impressive if foreboding expanse of wood and glass. A creepy opening montage, featuring various increasingly distressed women across, seemingly, various time periods, is an early indicator that not everything is as it appears. Certainly, the vibe seems off from the moment the door shuts behind them.

Much like this year’s Companion, which also dismantled a seemingly-perfect relationship over the course of a weekend in an isolated country home, red flags are festooned across the screen from the start. Screenwriter Nick Lepard is on more nuanced form here than he was penning the screenplay for recent shark-slasher Dangerous Animals, subtly twisting Liz and Malcolm’s loved-up vibe by turning such affectionate epithets as “she’s a keeper” into quietly menacing threats.

In this dialogue-light two-hander (Birkett Turton makes a brief appearance as Malcolm’s creepy cousin Darren and Eden Weiss as Darren’s taciturn girlfriend Minka), craft is key. Cinematography from Jeremy Cox lurks behind corners and makes the most of the cabin’s vertiginous angles, while a discordant score from Erdo Van Breemen, which blends shrill strings, tribal drums and breathy human voices, helps establish a growing sense of unease.

It’s quickly clear that something is very wrong and, when Malcolm heads back to the city to see to an ailing patient, Liz begins to experience terrifying visions of hideous figures. She feels woozy and discombobulated, unsure of what’s real, and decides she wants to leave. When Malcolm returns, he clearly doesn’t believe her and – gently but firmly asserting his concern and his love – insists that she stay. Even without spoilers, most savvy audiences can likely guess the direction this is ultimately heading, even if the final reveal attempts to take things up a notch.

Maslany is superb as Liz, effectively conveying just how quickly a level-headed person’s strength and independence can be eroded, how coercive control can be an insidious, undermining presence. Elsewhere, effects work is superb and the otherworldly beings are nightmarishly rendered as they haunt the edges of the frame, blur into the background and move among the trees.

Take away all that window dressing, however, and the film loses much of its power, its narrative a well-trodden story of a toxic heterosexual relationship in which one partner loses their sense of self, the film another example of female victimhood and terror as entertainment. And while the ending may promise some form of retribution, it is too little, too late.