Keeper: Getting Under Your Skin

 

Rick Rubin says that the best art is the kind that divides the audience. That makes sense when you walk out of Osgood Perkins’ latest film. It’s not a movie that aims to please. It’s ambitious overall, and at times confusing.

Folk horror isn’t really my thing. Even so, the film works if you watch it through the logic of a nightmare. It’s not far from what Perkins has already explored in Longlegs and The Monkey. Here we see his excesses, his taste for breaking logic, and his way of narrating from a place of discomfort.

The premise doesn’t hook you right away. A couple going to a cabin to celebrate their anniversary doesn’t sound like the start of anything memorable. However, Keeper is playing a different game. Perkins focuses on building atmosphere, and in that, he succeeds. He doesn’t hold your hand. He lets you fall slowly.

Part of that effect comes from the performances. Tatiana Maslany plays Liz with a chaotic intensity that never feels gratuitous. She’s uncomfortable because she’s supposed to be. Alongside her, Rossif Sutherland portrays Malcolm with ambiguity. His presence shatters any romantic illusion from the start and leaves a constant question hanging: What is really going on here?

The film inhabits a dreamlike universe. The psychological weighs heavier than any creature in the woods. What matters isn’t what you see, but what you think you see. The story gradually drags you into that folk territory, which can sometimes become tedious, but here it achieves something different. Perkins connects old witch-hunt stories with contemporary tales about toxic masculinity. Echoes of The Shining, A Woman Under the Influence, and Midsommar appear.

Perkins’ cinema doesn’t explode in front of you. It seeps in. It stays with you. It moves slowly, and by the time you realize it, it has already planted a feeling that’s hard to shake off. Keeper follows that same logic. It doesn’t try to shock with noise. It prefers the uncomfortable silence that lingers afterward.

It’s not a movie for everyone. It doesn’t even try to be. But we have to acknowledge Perkins’ work on a project that bets on discomfort rather than the obvious. And at the center of it all, a Tatiana Maslany who holds the chaos together with a presence that’s not easily forgotten.