Osgood Perkins' Surprisingly Stripped Down Horror Is Now On 4K Blu-Ray

Before his satanic mystery Longlegs became the horror hit of 2024, director Ogood Perkins had made three films that belonged to an indie niche only enjoyed by horror aficionados who would actively seek out strange fare. His best is his debut, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, a playful and mournful midwinter boarding school tale, and while his Netflix-distributed I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House got some notice, his austere Brothers Grimm adaptation, Gretel & Hansel, fizzled out in 2020. These films are patient and airless, taunting you with simple, appealing horror premises that feel stretched and subdued under all the whispering, nasty atmosphere.

Perkins hit the mainstream with Longlegs and especially The Monkey, last year’s ridiculous horror farce. The Keeper, also released last year, was an overlooked return to his more subdued side, and is worth a second look now that it’s received a 4K Blu-ray release.

How was Keeper received upon release?

Keeper was the third Perkins film distributed by Neon after Longlegs and The Monkey (all three were shot in Vancouver over an 18 month rolling production), but after the muted, baffled reception to Perkins’ garish Stephen King film, no-one at Neon really knew what to do with a simple, rural cabin Bluebeard riff like Keeper – especially as it hews far closer to the muted, strangled vibe of his early work. It boils everything we know about “elevated horror” down to its essential tenets, and its plain, no-frills execution may be the final word on the trend.

It would be fairer to say that Keeper wasn’t received at all when it came out in November. Reviews were few, far between, and mostly mediocre, and it earned a pithy $5 million worldwide. On paper, a stylized, indie horror that updates the misogynistic imprisonment themes of Bluebeard, especially featuring a great lead performance from an underused actress (Orphan Black and She-Hulk’s Tatiana Maslany), is the ideal movie for indie distributor Neon to savvily market. But after The Monkey performed worse than Longlegs, they probably balked at how stripped-back Keeper felt and decided it could easily be dumped.

Why is Keeper important to see now?

The past decade has seen an uptick of independent genre films influenced by slower, international cinema. These mesh a naturalistic, dread-and-anxiety-inducing style with overt psychological and interpersonal theming, and were timed perfectly with the rise of boutique, internet-favored distribution companies like A24, making “elevated horror” more of a branding exercise than an art movement.

With varying effectiveness, austere and punishing horror films like The Witch, Midsommar, Men, Relic, Saint Maud, The Vigil, and Censor chase invasive, gnarly scares rooted in character or social circumstances; their pursuit of dread and anxiety is rich with period detail and naturalistic filmmaking. Perkins’ first three films clearly belong to this trend, but by 2025, everyone was checked out of the subgenre’s quiet, scratchy, mundane instincts — nasty independent outliers like Bring Her Back not withstanding, the best received horror were also the most commercial, with Sinners, Weapons, Final Destination: Bloodlines, and 28 Years Later all marrying blockbuster intensity with unique style.

Keeper is so much a checklist of the stripped-back, inward-looking, and subversive tenets of the “elevated horror” genre that it was easy to overlook. Liz (Maslany) is making her first trip with her new boyfriend Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland), but as she settles into his eerily isolated woodland cabin, she’s unaware of what we saw in the opening minutes – a montage of different women with their partner, all shot from the man’s point-of-view, which steadily become more claustrophobic, intrusive, and panicked before culminating in nasty screams. Even if it undercuts Keeper’s mystery, this montage has a brusque candidness to it. We know why we’re here, and the horror is obvious, gendered, and inevitable.

Liz is blissfully lonely, but bored; her boyfriend seems absent, and his cousin Darren (Birkett Turton) bothers her with leering oafishness. There are only a few characters and even less plotting, but there are showy, dissolve-heavy dream sequences and creepy things lurking at the corner of otherwise plain shots of the woods. Keeper’s refusal to complicate itself becomes its greatest charm: Malcolm is basically all red flags, Liz’s discovery that the house conceals an evil secret happens unceremoniously, and the confirmation of long-buried misogyny perpetrated by the film’s Bluebeard stand-in is more of a shrug than a shock.

But so subdued and simmering is the mood of Keeper that the inevitability of its plot beats feels strangely relaxing. Whether he knew it or not, Perkins’ insistence on the plainest retelling of this indie horror formula has made it impossible for any future director to return to the same “elevated” well, as all the tropes and greatest hits are here in one place. Keeper is best watched in its Blu-ray form, as a quiet and domestic spooky tale best suited for a rainy evening at home (and it could be paired with another creepy homestead horror overlooked last year, The Woman in the Yard).

What new features does Keeper Blu-ray have?

As has frequently become the case with 4K Blu-rays of new releases, Keeper has frustratingly few special features, with the only notable extra being a commentary track by Perkins himself. Perkins is an entertaining and insightful talker, and his enthusiasm for talking candidly about why he loves horror sets him apart from younger directors who can be more guarded about their processes. After the strange rhythms of Keeper, rewatching with Perkins’ musings in your ear for 90 minutes is a treat.