Keeper Ending, Explained - Liz's Fate and What It All Means Actorsvaultpro

Osgood Perkins is a filmmaker who thrives on keeping audiences in the dark leading up to the release of his films. Even when watching one of his movies, the characters, plot, and themes are often shrouded in obscurity, which helps to make them so engrossing. While Perkins has been making films since 2015, it was his 2024 feature Longlegs that really cemented his place as one of the directors to look out for in contemporary horror. So much wasn’t known about this film going into it, and Neon’s unsettling marketing only stoked the flames. Perkins replicated this with his newest film, Keeper, and now that it’s finally out, the burning questions surrounding the secrecy have finally been revealed.

Much like the ending of Longlegs, the specifics of the supernatural scares at play are never fully explained. Instead, Perkins uses the abnormal and supernatural horrors that reveal themselves in Keeper to make a profound statement about relationships and the system of society known as the patriarchy. Given that the director has previously stated Longlegs was his ode to his “celebrity parents backstory,” and The Monkey was his way of dealing with his own traumatic history surrounding the deaths of his parents, it’s unsurprising that his newest movie has a deeper meaning. In Keeper, Perkins examines abusive relationships and explores a narrative of a woman taking back her autonomy.

‘Keeper’ Hides Its Main Antagonist in Plain Sight

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Keeper tells the story of Liz (Tatiana Maslany) and Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland), a couple who go out to the latter’s cabin to celebrate their one-year anniversary. Right from the start of the film, Perkins slowly eases you into uncertainty with dream-like visuals and odd visual choices that give viewers the feeling that a presence is watching the couple. The arrival of Malcolm’s obnoxious cousin Darren (Birkett Turton) and his supposedly non-English-speaking girlfriend Minka (Eden Weiss) only ratchets up the awkward atmosphere. The topic of conversation eventually shifts to a mysterious chocolate cake left by the “caretaker” of the cabin, which Minka warns Liz about, as it tastes bad. However, Liz eats a slice (after being coerced by Malcolm) and is later entranced by the cake, consuming the rest of it in the middle of the night.

Things get more mysterious in the woods surrounding the cabin after that night, as Liz experiences visions of dead women, and one scene even features Minka being taken and killed by unseen forces. It’s all played up to build to a cathartic third act, as at this point, viewers are unsure what Liz is experiencing until Malcolm, after leaving her alone in the cabin for quite some time, comes back and reveals the truth: he and his cousin captured a pregnant woman 200 years ago (who looks just like Liz and is also portrayed by Maslany) who gave birth to mysterious creatures. Malcolm killed the woman shortly after she gave birth, and he and Darren proceeded to lure women out to feed these creatures in exchange for eternal life. The cake was meant to drug Liz.

The children are finally shown in all their horrific glory, malformed creatures who keep their mother’s head preserved in a jar with some form of amber or honey. Liz is left to fend for herself in the cabin, though an oddity occurs that has seemingly never happened before— the children spare Liz, believing her to be their mother. The creatures that have long been hidden in the movie and the marketing aren’t the villains of this story. Instead, it’s Malcolm and his guise of being a gentle and caring person, who is the true antagonist of Keeper. The way he and his cousin treated the pregnant woman all those years ago has led to a cycle of trauma, abuse, and a dark lifestyle that the children have been forced to live under. That is, until they finally start embracing Liz as their maternal figure.

‘Keeper’s Third Act Reveals the Patriarchy as the True Horror

Malcolm goes to sleep after leaving Liz with the children, thinking that it will go the same way it had with all the other women (who, by the way, viewers were unknowingly introduced to at the start of the film through POV shots of what turned out to be Malcolm meeting them all for the first time). Instead, Malcolm wakes up aged and sick; the children are no longer giving him life. Soon, he is strung upside down by Liz, who bears the same black eyes as the very first woman that he killed. Malcolm begs for mercy, claiming that Liz was the first woman that he truly loved. Unswayed, Liz makes him eat some of the very same cake she had, before drowning him in the same liquid that the original woman’s head was preserved in.

It’s this final ominous shot of Malcolm hanging that the movie ends, morbidly set to the tune of “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” by Elvin Bishop. Keeper is about the cycle of toxic relationships that men can perpetuate. Osgood Perkins seeks to examine toxic masculinity and patriarchal power structures that seek to entrap women and make them feel helpless: Malcolm’s cabin is a microcosm of just such a thing. The movie’s title even feels like a double meaning; it’s not just a reference to a phrase someone uses to describe someone they want to stay in a relationship with (“She’s a keeper”), but also someone who selfishly tries to keep everything for themselves (Malcolm).

The folk horror aspect of Keeper also makes it a spiritual successor to Ari Aster’s film Midsommar, a movie also set in a remote location with its own spiritual secrets, and a toxic relationship at the center of it. Perkins’ film is much more mysterious, and the actual horror at the center of the film is the relationship between Liz and Malcolm, as opposed to the cult in Midsommar. However, both feature cathartic endings for the female leads, who break off from their controlling and manipulative counterparts and set their own path forward.

‘Keeper’ Reinforces Osgood Perkins’ Sharp Lens Through Which He Tells Stories

In the end, much of the secrecy surrounding Keeper isn’t just for shock value when you finally see the grotesque creatures secretly hiding in the woods and cabin. The mystery was also used to hide the fact that the scariest part of the movie is Malcolm’s manipulation and abuse of generations of women. The way that Rossif Sutherland expertly portrays Malcolm as a man who genuinely believes the lies he’s selling women is something that feels perfectly representative of how some toxic relationships masquerade a controlling nature as love.

Osgood Perkins continues to set new standards in the horror genre, taking both original works and adaptations, and using them to tell intimate stories that speak to the human experience. Whether it’s parental trauma or navigating unhealthy relationships, his films always seem to use shocking and sometimes terrifying imagery to convey an important message. In the case of Keeper, it’s all done in the service of critiquing modern-day relationship dynamics, specifically toxic ones that have been repeated for several generations; those are dependent on us as individuals to reexamine and break the cycle.