As most horror buffs know, the genre can be broken down into a number of different subgenres, thereby providing something for nearly every taste. A small sampling of these includes the slasher movie, the psychological thriller, supernatural horror (re: ghosts), the horror comedy, and a category for just about every mythological creature there is (vampires, werewolves, and so on). To be sure, there can be quite a bit of overlap between these subgenres. Yet most films generally tend to favor one subgenre above all others, as part of the fun inherent in horror filmmaking is taking a pre-existing template and twisting, shifting, or expanding it. In addition, most filmmakers working in horror seek to vary their work with each film they make.
For the first portion of his directing career, Osgood Perkins told a variety of stories in a very distinctive fashion. “The Blackcoat’s Daughter,” “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House,” and “Gretel & Hansel” all bear Perkins’ signature sense of somnambulist pacing and dread-filled ominousness, yet one’s a tale of the occult, another is a ghost story, and the other is a fairy tale. Perkins’ breakout hit, “Longlegs,” felt like a culmination of this particular style. After this success, it seems Perkins is interested in stretching his wings as far as he can creatively. This year’s “The Monkey” was a wild left turn, a Stephen King adaptation with “Final Destination” vibes. This week’s “Keeper” is yet another swerve, for while it’s recognizably Perkins’ film, it touches upon a wide assortment of horror movie subgenres. I had the opportunity to watch the film in advance of its release, and believe it will delight horror mavens for one major reason: it’ll keep them guessing thanks to its variety.
‘Keeper’ is one big bowl of horror movie stew
Thus far, there’s been a great deal of speculation as to what “Keeper” is even about, as the film has been kept secret and under wraps ever since it was shot in the summer of 2024. Whenever such a thing happens, some folks assume the worst, while others assume that there must be some huge twists or surprises in store. Neither is the case with “Keeper,” which isn’t some kind of M. Night Shyamalan-style film that seeks to pull the wool over the audience’s eyes. Instead, Perkins has constructed what amounts to a big bowl of horror movie stew, a film that keeps changing and shifting throughout its runtime yet feels of a piece when it’s all over.
The film starts out as Perkins’ riff on the “cabin in the woods” movie, a subset of horror which came to prominence in large part thanks to Sam Raimi’s “The Evil Dead,” and was canonized by Drew Goddard’s “The Cabin in the Woods.” A loving couple, Liz (Tatiana Maslany) and Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland), drive up to the latter’s family cabin for a weekend getaway, only for Malcolm, a physician, to get unexpectedly called away to work, leaving Liz alone in the cabin for a time. From there, “Keeper” expands its collection of subgenres. It touches upon the “woman alone with her fears and/or a threat” thriller that Roman Polanski popularized via his films like “Repulsion” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” It then glides through elements of the folk horror movie, fairy tale horror, serial killer thrillers, creature features, and even (in an oblique way) the vampire myth. All the while, Perkins manages to keep it feeling like one film. There’s no doubt that “Keeper” is one Matryoshka doll of a movie.
‘Keeper’ continues the tradition of the horror two-hander
Despite the myriad subgenres and influences on display in the film, “Keeper” does have a dominant horror subgenre in place: the two-hander thriller. A “two-hander” is a subgenre seen in films in general, but there is something special when the structure is used in horror. Its elegant, simple setup — where a film centers around two major characters — feeds into how well horror films make use of choreography, timing, and so on. Everything from films like “Deathtrap” to “Misery,” “Red Eye,” and “Creep” falls into this category, proving that the structure can be crossed over with various other horror subgenres.
While Perkins and screenwriter Nick Lepard have yet to reveal their personal influences in making “Keeper,” I feel that the film seems particularly close to two examples. One is Josh Ruben’s “Scare Me” from 2020, in which a frustrated writer (Ruben) and an established horror author (Aya Cash) attempt to scare each other when they’re stuck in the same cabin one stormy night, only for their festering resentments to turn into potentially deadly actions. Like “Keeper,” the film acts as an anthology in spirit but not in deed, with the stories providing some subgenre variety. The other film is 1987’s “The Caller,” an underseen gem from director Arthur Allan Seidelman and writer Michael Sloan, starring Madolyn Smith and Malcolm McDowell as a couple who have a chance meeting in a remote cabin in the woods. It’s a film, like “Keeper,” where nothing is as it seems, and where the plot develops like layers of an onion being peeled away. While it remains to be seen what general audiences will think of Perkins’ new experiment, I have a feeling that horror buffs will at least appreciate its ambition and variation.
“Keeper” is in theaters everywhere on November 13, 2025.
