Review of horror movie “Keeper” by Oz Perkins

For a filmmaker who insists on reinventing the wheel every time, refining his signature in various ways, Oz Perkins’ new Arrow not only misses the mark, it doesn’t even come close. You can read the review of the movie “Keeper” in this article.

Warning! There is a risk of revealing the story in the review of “The Watchman”.

“The Watchman” is supposed to be a horror film, but in the first and second act, it goes so slowly that it reaches the border of collapse; And when it remembers what genre it belongs to, it’s hard to please horror fans. The fact that the film turned out so poorly is more due to the conflict between the idea and the execution than the filmmaker’s goal. The story probably had many charms on paper, but in practice, these charms have completely disappeared.

Liz (Tatiana Maslany), a beautiful painter who is apparently not very good at choosing a life partner, along with Malcolm (Rusif Sutherland), go to a cottage outside the city on the occasion of the first anniversary of their relationship; Malcolm is such a good and kind man that from the first minutes you can guess that he has a crush on him. Their romantic trip to Malcolm’s family log cabin is the same kind of trips we have seen many times in horror movies; In fact, it is clear that something sinister is about to happen, but the film drags everything so much to get to the heart of it that we get bored.

Of course, I understand why Perkins is taking things slow. His main concern has always been “space making” and here, that atmosphere he wants is supposed to be formed in the bed of a house; So the storytelling is largely sidelined and the filmmaker’s focus is on making the house a living entity. Has it succeeded? absolutely The way he draws the environment of the house and creates suspense through it is admirable. In a smart decision, Perkins also avoids the wide shot; So we never really know whether we are in a small or a big cabin.

Perkins diversifies this closed space with the help of editing; The film is full of cuts that are hallucinatory; For example, Liz is lying in the bathtub as if she is in a river, or where she touches her hair and this movement turns into a forest dancing in the wind. Perkins’ approach to these moments is more poetic than narrative, and there’s nothing wrong with them. Despite this, the film, by insisting on Liz’s relationship with nature, gradually raises the question in the mind of the audience that do these scenes have any meaning at all?

Not much time has passed since the two main characters spend time when an uninvited guest arrives; Darren (Birkett Turton), Malcolm’s unstable and annoying cousin, and Minka (Aiden Weiss), who apparently doesn’t speak English but knows enough to say bad things about cake. The scene where they sit together is one of the film’s best moments, mostly because of how it’s shot. Framing focuses exclusively on the character speaking and excludes others; And this creates a suffocating feeling. Later, Liz, who hates chocolate, eats the cake brought by the janitor at Malcolm’s request to start the movie’s supernatural engine. The movie is not a disaster so far, it is also well made, but the main problem starts from here on; Where the film gets stuck in an endless cycle of clichés and repetition.

The film repeats a predictable routine endlessly. Liz hears a voice. looks around checks It does not reach a conclusion. And then this process is repeated. Sometimes we witness a dream, sometimes a shadow in the corner, but always the routine remains in place. Perhaps Perkins wanted to convey the sense of the main character’s imprisonment, but his efforts have produced the opposite result; Instead of being emotionally involved, our attention is drawn to repetitive patterns that, ironically, are not successful in creating tension. The script, which is supposed to be our guide in this spiral, has no external existence at all. The result is a labyrinth for which the exit is apparently not designed.

Tatiana Maslany is the only winning card of the film; Even when Perkins’ evasions irritate us, her fine performance as Liz cannot be overlooked. When Malcolm leaves Liz alone in the cabin to attend to her errands in town, the film finally finds its emotional core: her gradual breakdown. In these moments, Maslani’s face conveys mistrust well, as well as the desire to belong and fear.

As more secrets are revealed, the film also hints at themes of identity, sacrifice, and emotional attachment, but rarely expands on them. In the final part, Perkins explains everything clearly with a ridiculous monologue so that no particular mystery remains and we cannot have different interpretations of the story (of course, you will have many unanswered questions about the details, for example, why Liz looks exactly like the mother of these creatures). It is as if he believes that the viewer needs a manual to understand the stories; Meanwhile, the best horror movies are the ones that don’t explain anything directly, but instead speak in the form of images and events and provide a platform for the viewer to think and reach different conclusions.

So the third act, which could have been shocking and saved the film, acts like a firecracker that sparks but quickly goes out. In general, the second half of “The Watchman”, which was supposed to highlight the horror aspects of the story, arrives too late and lacks creativity. It’s okay for a horror movie to rely on payback formulas; But when the film doesn’t have a strong emotional base, there is no fear. Neither top-notch cinematography, nor sound design, nor good set design can make up for the lack of cohesion. In addition, Liz and Malcolm’s bad chemistry makes any attempt to “criticize modern relationships” fall flat on its face.

At least we see Liz’s wear and tear, but Malcolm is seemingly unaware that he’s in a horror movie. This disparity creates unintentional comedic moments that break the suspense and make the film’s key scenes funny. The irony of the story is that the film, while trying to narrate a love story doomed to failure, falls into the trap of exactly the same stereotypes that it claims to hate. Perkins, who has always shown that he is interested in deconstruction, here he relies on the same stereotypes that he wants to redefine. It is as if the filmmaker has taken a series of elements from other black romantic films and glued them together and added a scary dimension to them; So we have a kind of identity crisis, the movie doesn’t know what it wants to be, is it a folkloric horror story? Is it a criticism of relationships? Is this a movie about love and attachment?

Like other Oz Perkins films, “Watchman” looks good but tells its story in the worst way. Perkins had the necessary tools, but his ideas have lost their power and traction in the process of implementation. The Watchman wants to be many things, a horror nightmare, a dark romance, a surprising cinematic experience, but in the end, it’s a bland concoction.

* Footnote: The better translation of the film’s name is “Life Woman”, which is also mentioned in the story.

Birth certificate of the movie “Keeper”

Director: Oz Perkins
Author: Nick Leppard
Actors: Tatiana Maslany, Rousseff Sutherland, Kat Treton, Eden Weiss
Product: 2025, USA
IMDb rating for the movie: 7.5 out of 10
Movie rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 49%
Synopsis: On the occasion of the first anniversary of their relationship, Malcolm and Liz go to a remote cottage in the countryside for the weekend. Upon arrival, Liz finds a wrapped cake in the cottage, which Malcolm claims is a gift from the caretaker. At night, with Malcolm’s insistence, Liz eats a piece of cake and has strange hallucinations, but from the next day, she slowly realizes that these hallucinations are not without reason, until…

Criticism of “Guardian” is the author’s personal point of view and not necessarily the position of Digikala Mag.

Source: Digikala Mag