Director Osgood Perkins became a breakout success with his serial killer (but actually supernatural) horror flick Longlegs (2024), and fans have been anticipating his newest film, Keeper, after a haunting first trailer. And yet, the first footage from Keeper seemed to tease a romantic psychological thriller: Leads Tatiana Maslany (Marvel’s She-Hulk, Orphan Black) and Rossif Sutherland (Orphan: First Kill, The Retreat) seemed to play a couple whose venture to a remote cabin brings all their lingering relationship tensions to the surface.
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Well, Neon Films may have learned a thing or two about working with Perkins, because this latest trailer for Keeper is letting fans know beyond any shadow of a doubt that things are going to get weird. Supernatural weird. Again.
Keeper “If only you were dead” (Trailer)
The marketing for Keeper continues to showcase the creativity that NEON is putting into its projects and their rollout. Even this trailer is listed on YouTube as “If only you were dead.” A massively provocative and mysterious title for a major studio’s new horror flick. But exactly the kind of thing the fanbase might eat up with a spoon.
Instead of a typical synopsis (or anything at all, really, about the movie’s plot), we get a boastful name-drop endorsement for the film: “Guillermo del Toro. James Wan. Damien Leone. Osgood Perkins’ KEEPER has been unanimously hailed by the modern masters of horror. In theaters November 14.”
Up until now, the film has kept Maslany and Sutherland in the spotlight; this new footage teases a much wider cast of actors, many of whom seem to be playing some pretty dramatic (if not freaky) roles. Which raises the larger point: even in quick cuts of sizzle reel footage, it seems like Keeper’s story will go far beyond the main couple, “Liz” and “Malcolm”; it looks like this story could be told in several Tarantino-style vignettes, more akin to something like The Grudge than the intensely focused romance-horror film some may be expecting.
With both Longlegs and his follow-up, The Monkey, Oz Perkins did see some amount of criticism from those who were caught off guard by the marketing vs. viewing experience. Longlegs started like The Silence of the Lambs and then took a sudden supernatural occult swerve in the middle; The Monkey teased Stephen King-style horror and gore, but was ultimately a black comedy about midlife maturation and working out family trauma. So what will we get with Keeper? The mystery of expectation is steadily becoming part of this director’s mystique.
That said, the key here is that once again, Perkins has put some pretty haunting imagery on the screen that demands to be explained, or at least experienced in full. For fans, it’s a solid hope for at least one more great big success story for horror movies in 2025.
Keeper will be in theaters on November 14th.
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Image courtesy of Lucasfilm
