Keeper

The old saying, “Strike while the iron is hot” is never more meaningful than in the movie industry, where financing is hard to find at the best of times. After the success of Longlegs, director Osgood Perkins delivered two more pictures in the following year. The first was The Monkey, which I had mixed feelings about and reviewed on this very site . The second is his current film, Keeper, which, while a bit rough around the edges, still delivers beautifully creepy imagery and haunting atmosphere. I enjoyed this foray into folk horror and the perils of romance.

Although painter Liz (Tatiana Maslany) is very much a New York City girl, she agrees to spend her first anniversary with doctor boyfriend Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at his cabin in the countryside. The cabin is spacious, and the surroundings are gorgeous, but the privacy is broken by another cabin nearby, owned by Malcolm’s obnoxious cousin, Darren (Birkett Turton). Darren and his model girlfriend, Minka (Eden Weiss), drop by unexpectedly on the first night, annoying Liz. Malcolm tries to save the evening by urging Liz to eat a slice of the chocolate cake his caretaker has made for her. Although initially reluctant, Liz eats it all. As time goes by, Liz begins to have disturbing visions of screaming women. Malcolm has to return to the city for work for one day, and as she’s alone in the cabin, Liz hears and sees progressively more alarming things, causing her to fear for her life.

Maslany strikes a nice balance between gradually increasing unease and succumbing to visions, as anger powers Liz to attempt to understand her situation. Sutherland excels at projecting a façade of bland normalcy, explaining away any of Liz’s concerns with a look of mild shame at his perceived inadequacy. Turton knows the assignment and imbues Darren with the proper amount of pushy arrogance, and Weiss simmers in silence as Darren’s trophy girlfriend (she also gets one of the best WTF moments in the film).

Director Perkins continues his flair for lovely images (credit cinematographer Jeremy Cox) and painterly shot composition, but this time his focus is on rainy forests and pristine rivers instead of the chilly locations of Longlegs or The Blackcoat’s Daughter. He doesn’t skimp on the horror, however, and the nightmarish images found here are inspired in their almost exquisite grotesquerie. The cleverly wrought opening montage of doomed young women sets the stage efficiently, and one shot, in which Liz is resting in the bath only to have a vision of a river superimposed over her, is quietly trippy. Other highlights include an ominous cake box, a nasty surprise in the trash, a trip up a tree, a new use for honey and a surreptitious heart drawn in the moisture evaporated onto a window.

Nick Lepard’s script brings elements of a dark fairy tale into the modern story, and he deserves credit for the original and surprising aspects of the movie. Keeper still feels like a distinctively Oz Perkins film, though, down to the appropriate black humored choice of Elvin Bishop’s “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” over the credits. This one’s a keeper.