Keeper (4K UHD Review)
Director
Osgood PerkinsRelease Date(s)
2025 (February 3, 2026)Studio(s)
Neon (Decal Releasing)- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: C
Review
Director Osgood Perkins made his feature film debut in 2015 with The Blackcoat’s Daughter, which barely even received a theatrical release, let alone made much of a splash. Ten years later, it’s fair to say that his fortunes have changed—enough so that he’s becoming a prominent part of the advertising campaigns for his films. His latest effort, Keeper, was shot between his 2024 hit Longlegs and his 2025 follow-up The Monkey, but it was released afterward. During that span of time, he went from being a noteworthy filmmaker to becoming something of a brand name. Distributor Neon had advertised both Longlegs and The Monkey as being written and directed by Perkins, but they ended up billing Keeper as “A Dark Trip from Osgood Perkins.” That’s interesting because it’s not the usual possessory credit, but rather something else entirely—to paraphrase the title of a book by Joseph Gelmis, it’s presenting the film director as superstar. While other horror directors like George A. Romero, Wes Craven, and John Carpenter all earned their status as brand names, is the same thing really true of Perkins? Time will tell, but Neon certainly thinks that he has (and to be fair, he’s made a fair amount of coin for them).
Keeper was actually something of a lark, or to be more precise, it was the result of pure happenstance. Perkins and his crew had fallen victim to the twin specters of the Writer’s Guild and Screen Actor’s Guild strikes in 2023, and with work on his other films held up by that roadblock, he hit on the idea of making Keeper as a way to keep busy. It was shot in Canada using Canadian actors who weren’t a part of SAG-AFTRA, while Perkins turned over screenwriting duties to Canadian writer Nick Lepard (to be fair, that’s one reason why Neon omitted the usual “written and directed by Osgood Perkins” from their advertising). But the reality is that Keeper was made up on the fly—not exactly improvised, but Perkins, Lepard, and the cast developed the film as they went along, while they were shooting it. It was produced on a much smaller budget than either Longlegs or The Monkey, but Neon was happy enough with the results that they ponied up a bit more money for reshoots and extra visual effects work.
The limited budget clearly impacted the story, which is essentially a bottle episode set in a single location. Dr. Malcolm Westbridge (Rossif Sutherland) and his girlfriend Liz (Tatiana Maslany) are celebrating their one-year anniversary as a couple, and despite the fact that Liz is a bit of a city girl, she agrees to go on a weekend outing at a remote cabin in the woods. (Sooner or later, all horror movie roads seem to lead to a cabin in the woods.) The secluded setting is briefly interrupted by a visit from Malcolm’s disreputable cousin Darren (Birkett Turton) and his European girlfriend Minka (Eden Weiss), but soon the couple are back on their own again. Malcolm insists that Liz eat some chocolate cake that was baked by the housekeeper, and despite her aversion to chocolate, she chokes down a piece of it. Shortly after that, Malcolm leaves her to deal with one of his patients back in the city, and while he’s gone, Liz’s world slowly starts to come apart in an increasingly supernatural fashion.
If all of that sounds like a conventional haunted house story (or at least an Evil Dead style tale of demonic occurrences in the woods), Perkins actually has an entirely different trick up his sleeve. Needless to say, the cake was a lie, and Liz soon finds herself in a fugue state where she can’t trust her own perceptions. Perkins and his cinematographer Jeremy Cox mimic her disorientation visually by filming her through screens and windows, reflected in mirrors and/or water, and they also employ multilayered imagery. Yet even this Rosemary’s Baby view of Liz’s distorted perceptions isn’t the endgame for Keeper, which eventually moves firmly into folk horror territory—but it’s folk horror where the real monstrosity is toxic masculinity. The villain’s mistake was in thinking that the chthonic feminine forces that have shaped his life could ever be fully contained by his masculine potency, but something has been unleashed in Liz that will never be contained again.
Despite the low budget, Keeper was ultimately much less successful than either Longlegs or The Monkey had been, barely pulling in $4.2 million at the domestic box office. Does that mean Neon’s faith in Osgood Perkins as a brand name was misplaced? Not necessarily. The genre-bending nature of the story made it difficult to market without getting into spoiler territory, and while the performances are good, Maslany and Sutherland are hardly major box office draws. Keeper is still a solid (if unexceptional) horror effort, so it will be interesting to see where Perkins takes the brand going forward.
Jeremy Cox (who also shot Longlegs and The Monkey for Perkins) captured Keeper digitally, but there’s no information available regrading the cameras, lenses, capture resolutions, or post-production work involved. It does seem likely that it was finished as a full 4K Digital Intermediate (framed at 1.85:1), but the intentionally distorted nature of the cinematography makes that difficult to determine. In any event, it’s been graded here for High Dynamic Range in HDR10 only. The image exhibits good clarity during the simpler, more direct shots like landscapes and closeups, but the frequent foregrounding, shooting through obstructions, and shallow focus all understandably limit the perceived resolution. The HDR grade is suitably tame since earth tones and shadows dominate the proceedings, but the contrast range is as strong as the material allows. Note that none of that is a knock against Keeper; it’s just a film that needs to be approached with tempered visual expectations. This was never going to be dazzling demo material.
Audio is offered in English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and English Descriptive Audio, with optional English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles. 4K demo material or not, Keeper is a good reminder that 5.1 is still a perfectly serviceable format. While, yes, an Atmos mix could have offered slightly greater immersion (and there are plenty of opportunities here for use of the overhead channels), it’s still a nicely immersive 5.1 mix with plenty of atmospheric effects to go around. They’re precisely positioned across the soundstage, too, and while there aren’t a ton of directionalized effects, there’s a good use of offscreen sound effects to add to the suspense. The ambient score was composed by Canadian musician Edo Van Breemen, using a combination of acoustic instrumentation with electronic sampling and various percussive effects. It supports the overall atmospherics of the mix, sometimes making it difficult to tell where the music ends and the sound effects begin.
The Decal Releasing 4K Ultra HD release of Keeper is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film (typical for Decal, there’s no Digital Code). It also includes a slipcover that duplicates the artwork on the insert. The following extras are included on both discs, all of them in HD:
- Commentary with Osgood Perkins
- Teaser (1:10)
- Trailer (2:23)
In his commentary track, Perkins covers the background of the film, confirming that it was indeed shot between Longlegs and The Monkey due to the vagaries of the Writer’s Guild strike, with much of it made up under the guidance of Canadian writer Nick Lepard. They planned for some things but ended up changing others on the fly, like the flowing streams that overlay the shot of Liz in the bath (the original idea would have been more obvious but much less effective). Perkins breaks down some of the thematic and story elements that may not be clear on first glance, like the fact that (spoiler alert) Liz thinks that the cake tastes like shit because that’s exactly what it’s made out of—witch’s shit, to be precise. He also points out some of the subtle uses of visual effects in the film, like the stains from the aforementioned cake on Liz’s teeth. As commentaries go, this is a bit sparse at times, but Perkins still makes some interesting observations.
And Keeper is indeed an interesting film, even if it’s much lower-key than some of Perkins’ other work—and more Tatiana Maslany is always welcome, too. Neon’s UHD version may not be a dazzler, but it gets the job done, and it seems faithful to the design of the film. It’s recommended for adventurous horror fans in general and Osgood Perkins fans in particular.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).