Osgood Perkins’ Keeper is a film that proves atmosphere can only do so much heavy lifting before the floor gives out. The movie is, without question, woven with dread; Perkins knows how to evoke mood like few contemporary horror filmmakers today. But atmosphere, no matter how good, is not enough to rescue a film from the weight of a screenplay that’s barely there.
Keeper unfolds as a collection of eerie vignettes, but the film struggles to assemble them into anything resembling a narrative. There’s no real plot structure for most of the runtime and the film commits a fatal genre sin: it mistakes shapelessness for intrigue. Then, at the end, it hurls an exposition hail mary at the audience, hoping it can stitch together any semblance of lore. The pieces simply do not click. This isn’t entirely Perkins fault, though, as he didn’t write Keeper. Compare this to the genuinely-good Longlegs, where his writing and directing created something more even, controlled, and scary. Even The Monkey felt more confident in its narrative choices than what’s on display here.
What Keeper also greatly lacks is varied tension. The build-up-and-release is what defines exemplary horror (just see this Zach Cregger’s masterfully controlled Weapons). Keeper, by contrast, maintains a single, unchanging level of dread. Without peaks or valleys, the atmosphere has no payoff. This means Tatiana Maslany has to shoulder many of the film’s shortcomings. Despite an admirable effort, she does not overcome. Rossif Sutherland, unfortunately, offers a wooden performance that feels like a drama-class version of a villain.
It’s hard not to feel a little frustrated with Osgood Perkins right now. Three feature films in eighteen months is an impressive output, but the risk is starting to feel greater than the reward. Keeper feels like the clearest sign that he’s stretching himself too thin. One can only hope next year’s The Young People marks a return to form, because we need more consistent auteurs more than ever.
