If you like the person you\u2019re seeing enough, almost anything can transform a bad date into a romantic memory<\/a>. Rude waiters become funny stories. Nervous jitters reveal deep feelings. That creepy guy who was watching you and your date kiss in the car? He just wants to be at your wedding.<\/p>\n And yet, Oz Perkins\u2019 \u201cKeeper\u201d is as bad of an idea as that invite, and it\u2019s got even fewer redeeming qualities. From the genre-embattled Neon (h\/t \u201cShelby Oaks\u201d<\/a>), this nightmarish romance sees the director of \u201cLonglegs\u201d<\/a> and \u201cThe Monkey\u201d<\/a> throw more spaghetti at the wall and walk away with his worst movie yet. If that metaphor doesn\u2019t totally track, well that only makes it all the more well-suited to describe Perkins\u2019 profoundly dull new feature about the early stages of love, which amounts to little more than a wooden series of \u201cConjuring\u201d<\/a>-esque cliches and try-hard visual effects.<\/p>\n More from IndieWire<\/strong><\/p>\n The red flags first start to appear when snarky painter Liz (the always wonderful Tatiana Maslany, here defeated by a thoroughly exhausting script) takes her new relationship out for spin, as she agrees to join her sweet surgeon boyfriend, Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland), on a couple\u2019s getaway to his strangely modern cabin. Tucked in the emerald-green woods of Vancouver, Malcom\u2019s glossy abode overlooks a fairytale meadow, some ominous trash bags, and his cousin\u2019s eerily similar place next door. An \u201cAmerican Psycho\u201d in Canada, Darren (Birkett Turton) is a total scumbag, as transparently awful as he is easy to forget. His vapid girlfriend Minka (Eden Weiss) fares a bit better, announcing herself with a thick accent, paper-thin backstory as a model, and a weird-enough opening line: \u201cIt tastes like shit.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018Keeper\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n She\u2019s referring to a chocolate cake that\u2019s baked through with more personality than the entirety of the movie\u2019s human cast. Liz won\u2019t clock that the mysterious treat has been made for her specifically \u2014\u00a0not until she\u2019s hunched over Malcolm\u2019s kitchen table, moaning in Minka\u2019s voice while she doggedly reenacts the grossest scene from \u201cMatilda.\u201d<\/a> But soon enough, Liz gets left alone and sees a shadowy thing over there. Then, oh no! It\u2019s another shadowy thing over\u2026 there! Making fun of bad magicians is a kind of shitty thing to do, but Perkins\u2019 slight-of-hand needs real work if it\u2019s ever going to save a movie.<\/p>\n Putting on a show that\u2019s self-important at worst, familiar and forced at best, this frustrating fever dream (a generous term) offers only a handful of surprises to the average horror fan. It\u2019s got none of the underdog energy you need to explain that shortage, and the limited goodwill this director once had with genre audiences has already run dry. Perkins will need more than a dictionary definition of surrealism to work out the next one, and Nick Leperd\u2019s script \u2014 all wheel-spinning in search of elusive substance \u2014\u00a0doesn\u2019t give the movie\u2019s ideas enough shape for Perkins to have fun playing around with them. If \u201cThe Monkey\u201d exploded with divisive originality, and \u201cLonglegs\u201d spun a solid mystery well, \u201cKeeper\u201d proves a keenly motivated artist can receive several chances and mess up worse each time.<\/p>\n Jump-scares tend to skew more annoying than frightening when they\u2019re presented without the right context, and as a matter of plot and pacing, \u201cKeeper\u201d is all over the place. Most movies keep you engaged through the narrative\u2019s connective tissue. Point A escalates to point B, then to C, D, and so on.\u00a0A linear structure that ramps up gradually can help the audience experience visionary finales in a way that makes sense and stays taut. Arthouse filmmakers can achieve that same effect through stylish, opaque images meant to manipulate feelings on a subconscious level. But Perkins\u2019 listless saga is only dreamlike if you\u2019re dreaming about MadLibs, and \u2014 paired with awful dialogue \u2014\u00a0randomness is not enough to sustain our interest.<\/p>\n \u2018Keeper\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n Foggy window. Garbage disposal. Blood. Screaming. Demonic\u2026 snake\u2026 thing. Not every familiar beat in \u201cKeeper\u201d would make it up on the board for a Perkins-hosted round of \u201cFamily Feud.\u201d But this chaotic supernatural effort rehashes a string of recognizable scares most viewers have seen executed better before. There isn\u2019t enough that works comedically to call this satire, and worse still, the jokes that almost land reek of a smugness that feels like it\u2019s insulting your intelligence, even if it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n Characters are more than the titles they hold at their jobs, and a dozen vaguely freaky clues do not an inciting incident make. Maslany seems to almost willfully flatten her typical charisma as Liz, matching the inscrutable sheen that cloaks the rest of the film with an over-egged sameness that firmly implies the actress wanted to be there; she just didn\u2019t know what to do. Meanwhile, Sutherland doesn\u2019t even attempt to act beyond the likability baked into his teddy bear face \u2014\u00a0shrugging off lines like the slouchy sweaters everyone in \u201cKeeper\u201d wears for some reason. Neither actor says much of value about gender roles or modern intimacy. Still, the contrast between the levels of creative effort is telling, painful, and sharp.<\/p>\n Bizarre editing puts scenes that look like they were made for the finale at the top of the story, and the tone slaps from grounded suspense to airy agony in a sloppy cycle that recalls truly bad sex. Snapping in and out of the action at will, this grueling chore of a genre exercise all but stops the projector to ask if you \u201clike that\u201d before trudging towards more of the nonsense that \u2014\u00a0for all of its randomness \u2014\u00a0feels strangely predictable in light of the movie\u2019s title. Lacking in chemistry, clarity, and conviction, Neon\u2019s latest rendezvous with Perkins hits like a crumbling marriage that would serve everyone involved by ending as soon as possible.<\/p>\n From Neon, \u201cKeeper\u201d opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, November 14. <\/p>\n Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n Best of IndieWire<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Indiewire’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you like the person you\u2019re seeing enough, almost anything can transform a bad date into a romantic memory. Rude waiters become funny stories. Nervous jitters reveal deep feelings. That creepy guy who was watching you and your date kiss in the car? He just wants to be at your wedding. And yet, Oz Perkins\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2154492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[412476,410428,348485,348486],"class_list":["post-2154491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-keeper","tag-oz-perkins","tag-rossif-sutherland","tag-tatiana-maslany"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\u2018Keeper-Review-Not-Even-the-Great-Tatiana-Maslany-Can-Save.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2154491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2154493,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154491\/revisions\/2154493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2154492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2154491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2154491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2154491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
Grade: D+<\/h2>\n