Keeper (2025)

A nice weekend away. A cabin in the woods. A man (Malcolm, played by Rossif Sutherland) and a woman (Liz, played by Tatiana Maslany). It's a standard horror movie premise, but director Osgood Perkins and writer Nick Lepard try to deliver something a bit different. It's just a shame that they didn't try to deliver something really good.

Made cheaply and sneakily during a time when major strike action delayed the planned shooting schedule of The Monkey, this is a film that feels exactly like what it is. It's slight, it's unimpressive, and it was probably a lot more fun to make than to watch. 

When Malcolm and Liz arrive at their romantic destination, it doesn't take long for things to become slightly unsettling. There's something a bit off between the two of them, but neither seem to acknowledge it. Viewers might think they're watching two people play parts they don't really understand, which isn't something that should ever happen onscreen, unless it's very intentional. Everything gets even stranger when Darren (Birkett Turton) turns up, accompanied by his current partner, Minka (Eden Weiss). I've mentioned them here purely for the sake of the plot summary, but they're never more than occasional irritants.

It should be clear to anyone who has seen more than one Osgood Perkins movie by now that he has a very particular approach to the horror genre. There's often a focus on atmosphere over logic, but he's also become much more comfortable with mixing in some comedic elements. I can only assume that's what appealed to him about this idea, which would have been much more effective if allowed to be a much more straightforward horror. I'm not sure how much of this was fleshed out by Lepard (who did such great work on Dangerous Animals), but it feels like something that was workshopped and tweaked to cater to whatever the actors wanted to do on any given day.

Maslany is normally a great presence onscreen, and she has such fantastic range, but her performance here is not good. It's over the top and artificial in a way that calls attention to the weakness of the screenplay, and she's not helped by the others being equally bad. Sutherland, Turton, and Weiss benefit from me not expecting anything much from them, and they deliver . . . nothing much, to put it as nicely as I can.

People desperate for some folk horror may enjoy this, but only if you've avoided the many other folk horrors from the past few decades. It may not be awful in every department, but it's hard to remember that when so many individual moments stink so badly. Perkins has earned enough goodwill for me to keep looking forward to whatever he does next, but I'm not sure how long it will remain. 

3/10

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Orphan: First Kill (2022)

Although this may seem like a sequel that has come along too late, and wasn’t anything that people were asking for, it must be said that the fanbase for Orphan has just grown and grown over the years. It is such a perfect mix of the camp and the twisted, despite also being completely unbelievable. I wasn’t sure if this second film, a prequel (as the title implies), would be able to sit alongside the first film, but I am happy to say that it does.

It all starts at the institute where Leena (Isabelle Fuhrman) is being kept. She is very violent, smart, and dangerous. And it doesn’t take her long to figure out an escape plan. Out in the wide world, Leena decides to take on the identity of a missing girl named Esther, which allows her to get from Estonia to America, to then be “reunited” with her family. Can she keep up the facade for long though, and will she be tripped up by the fact that her potential mother (played by Julia Stiles) seems to suspect that something isn’t quite right.

Directed this time around by William Brent Bell (a man who has delivered numerous films that don’t exactly set the world alight, but who also seemed to pleasantly surprise many viewers with The Boy before spoiling things with Brahms: The Boy II), Orphan: First Kill isn’t the most inventive film, nor is it visually stunning (although there are some lovely shots here and there), but that doesn’t matter really, because the big selling point is the entertainingly deadly main character. It is a film saved by a middle section that absolutely understands how best to rework that central character.. There are a couple of fun twists, and everything is set up in a way that starts a clock running. Viewers know that Esther will need to act quickly, and they also know what she is capable of. 

The script, worked on by David Coggeshall developing the story and ideas of David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Alex Mace, has to tie in to the first movie, which is where it is weakest, but allows for some fun trickery with the details of a backstory that viewers will assume they already know. The notes are the same, but this is a very different tune being played.

Fuhrman, needing to be digitally de-aged this time around, is just as much fun in the role as she was last time. In fact, she’s arguably even more enjoyable to watch here, having less scenes that require her to hide her true nature. Stiles is equally enjoyable, pitching her performance perfectly at the level best suiting the tone of the material. Rossif Sutherland and Matthew Finlan (as “daddy” and “big brother”, respectively) aren’t quite as good, although the latter works very well in his scenes alongside Stiles, and it is a shame that the writers didn’t think to push things further. Have a bigger selection of characters to cause problems, have more troubling secrets hidden away under a civil and well-to-do exterior.

If you enjoyed the first movie then you should find enough to enjoy here. Although it ultimately fails to match the highs and surprises of Orphan, this makes an admirable attempt to give people what they want while trying to add one or two sudden turns. I don’t think a third film is possible, considering the timeline already covered, but if it is . . . I will check it out.

6/10

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Dead By Dawn 2018: Trench 11 (2017)

We know that war is hell, of course, which makes it surprising that we don't have even more horror movies set during wartime. There are some, ranging from the flawed brilliance of The Keep to the entertaining lunacy of Frankenstein's Army, and you can include films as varied as Twilight Zone: The Movie, Jacob's Ladder, and Iron Sky, but they remain a very small percentage of the horror genre (not counting the multitude of SS/war torture exploitation flicks), and the truly effective war horrors are even rarer.

I am saying all this because Trench 11 is a horror movie set during wartime, and it happens to be a very good one.

The plot revolves around a plan to explore and destroy the titular trench. It will take a small team, and they will all be relying on the expertise of a tunneler named Berton (Rossif Sutherland), but nobody is prepared for what they find underground; the dangerous results of experiments into biological weaponry by the Germans.

Directed by Leo Scherman, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Matt Booi, this is a very enjoyable mix of subterranean claustrophobia, classic evil German villains (not Nazis, but close enough), and squirmy, squishy, body horror. It manages to be different from all of the films already mentioned above, while also managing to hit one or two familiar beats for this subgenre.

The cast all do a good job, and they ARE given enough moments to show some personality before everything starts to go to hell in a hand grenade, but it always feels like Sutherland's movie, allowing him the biggest share of the screentime as his nervous hero remains determined to get the job done as quickly as possible and then get the hell out of the trench. Matching our lead hero is Robert Stadlober as the main villain. His character, Reiser, is someone who views the chais and pain and death around him as a success. It shows that the biological weapon works even better than they could have dreamed.

Another big plus for the film is that is refreshingly unpretentious. This is not a film that wants to pile multiple layers on and ask us to delve into the dark psyche of shellshocked soldiers. It throws us into a very terrifying environment with the characters, it adds more and more horror around every dark corner or metal door, and it ultimately provides superior entertainment for genre fans.

7/10

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