KEEPER REVIEW: How does Osgood Perkins Stack Up?

Osgood Perkins’ Keeper is the most beautiful movie that, in the end, I’ve hated. Truly, the film is a marvel to behold, but the rest of the film is so lackluster, overly simple to follow, and, ultimately, not scary, which is kind of important when you are trying to make a horror film. It should be said that Perkins has been churning out films, most of which have been GOOD films (I really liked The Monkey). However, with the pace that he has been going, there was bound to be a dud in there somewhere. Keeper fails in just about every way possible. Leaving you with a strikingly beautiful experience void of any form of substance.

Keeper begins with a retrospective of murder. A table that gets set, but guests don’t really take to. The film follows Liz and Malcolm as they spend their first anniversary together at Malcolm’s family cabin out in the woods. Yes. It started at that volume of trope. From the get-go, it’s obvious that things just aren’t right. The film from there devolves into a number of sequences meant to scare you, but feel more like your local high school haunted house. They were just so unbelievable that you were immediately taken out of them in an instant. Simply put, and I hate putting it this way, it was dumb. There is some level of suspension of disbelief that has to be taken into account, but it can’t be so out of left field that you contemplate whether or not a real person would act that way or not. The film just fails over and over again. Keeper never picks up the steam it needs to be a good film.

What Keeper does well, it does REALLY well. It is very clear that Perkins’ is skilled with a camera and works with some of the best cinematographers that can be found in the industry. The camera work, done as if the audience is peering from around corners and slowly encroaching on the characters, is extremely good at building the tension. It just fails to capitalize on that terror 100% of the time. Seriously, I really wanted to like this film.

When Keeper falls short, it falls REALLY short. Like Homer jumping the canyon short. The story never really got up to speed and was just, for lack of a better word, boring. I found it hard to pay attention. The performances from the cast did not help with engagement throughout. Tatiana Maslany puts on an exemplary performance; however, she feels wasted in a movie that never truly understands her character. I could never pinpoint exactly why she would do things as the story progresses, because almost everything she did in the second and third acts was strikingly out of character for the character that was presented in the first act.

Partnered with a mostly robotic and uninspired performance from Rossif Sutherland, Keeper never really finds a way to make the pieces fit the way it intends to. The supporting cast isn’t much better, as they just come off as stereotypes of characters that you’d find in any 1980s RomCom or horror film. It’s just not compelling, and I found myself more often than not having to force myself to engage with the film the further it went along.

Overall:

Osgood Perkins’ Keeper had all the potential in the world. A good lead, and it was beautifully shot. Unfortunately, it failed to engage the audience in a mostly boring, un-scary flop of a film that had unlimited potential, but no substance.

Rating: 4/10