After Longlegs (one of the best movies of 2024) and his gory Stephen King adaptation, The Monkey, Osgood Perkins already has another upcoming horror movie that's set to hit theaters this fall. It’s called Keeper and, so far, there have been a lot more questions and theories in regard to what the movie is actually about. So, when I caught up with Perkins and the movie’s star, Tatiana Maslany, at San Diego Comic-Con on behalf of CinemaBlend last week, they helped clear up some of the most common misconceptions about the production.
Osgood Perkins Shares His Intentions Behind Keeper's Teaser Trailer
Last week, the first teaser for Keeper hit YouTube, and it got fans speculating about what exactly is being planned by the filmmaker who showcased Nicolas Cage's creepy performance in Longlegs. Since the first look dropped, fans have been theorizing that the movie occurs across different time periods and will perhaps be similar to the first-person POV of the critically-acclaimed early 2025 movie Presence. When I brought these ideas to Perkins, here’s what he had to say:
It couldn't be more far off. It has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with Presence. It has nothing to do with somebody watching people. Really what that teaser shows is women through time, in different time periods. 1800s women, there's a 1950s woman, there's an eighties woman and seventies woman, and then there's Tatiana from the present.
I honestly imagined a blaring game show button sound when Perkins shot down the fan theories I’ve seen rolling around the internet. (To be honest, I've also discussed those ideas with my other horror-loving co-workers.) It sounds like the teaser is very much a teaser, and purposefully doesn’t give away much from the movie itself. As the filmmaker continued:
If it's supposed to say anything, it's supposed to sort of say like, love through time or relationships through time are essentially the same. Like, it's not like we essentially bring the same things to what would be what would be messing someone up in the 1800s is not that different from what would be messing someone up in the 1900s.
These days, audiences so used to seeing movies spelled out for them in trailers, but Osgood Perkins and Neon are taking a different approach for the new horror movie. Thank goodness too, because my lack of knowledge about the specifics actually has me more excited for the film somehow.
What Keeper Is Actually About
Now, of course, I did seek out clarity about what exactly fans should be expecting from Keeper. Here’s what Perkins said about the subject matter of his next movie:
We wanted to make a movie about a horror movie about a relationship. And you know, part of what we like to do, me and my collaborators, we like to take sort of a recognizable shape and poke holes in it and try to make something new and original.
Perkins told us he was interested in the “horrors of relationships,” and was also trying to make a movie for less than $1 million. As he continued:
It's a single location movie. It's a cabin in the woods, but it's really about these people who are sort of going on their first trip away together. She's going to his cabin in the woods and what's there and what's their both in.
In short, the director is taking a common trope in horror movies and putting his own spin on it. With that in mind, I’m so interested in what we’ll get with Keeper. Especially with Neon also having another relationship movie, Together, which features body horror moments.
Tatiana Maslany Shares Her Reaction To Seeing Keeper For The First Time
During the interview, Tatiana Maslany also teased Keeper for us by sharing her reaction to seeing the movie for herself. As she explained:
My experience watching Keeper too was that I found it very entertaining, but then also left going, ‘Oh my God, I need to like, study this movie.’ Like, I'm curious what people are gonna read into this film. I feel like a really smart audience that gets off on those things. On watching a film multiple times. And sort of like collecting hints and getting obsessed with some through-line or whatever. There's a lot of stuff to feast on in this movie.
Maslany also brought up how the movie “couldn’t be more different” from both The Monkey (which we give four stars in our review), which she actually shot after this latest film and even Longlegs. The actress also called it a “way adult movie,” particularly due to how it approaches romantic relationships.
After speaking with Osgood Perkins and Tatiana Maslany, I'm definitely even more intrigued and curious about what horrors are to come in Keeper. The film is set to hit theaters amid the 2025 movie schedule on November 14 and, in the meantime, try not to get too wrapped up in those theories.
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