Keeper 2015

A haunting, slowly unraveled mystery opens with a sweeping montage that follows a string of women across different decades, seen through the gaze of an unseen observer. At first they radiate happiness, their days bright with simple joys, but as the scenes progress a sense of unease grows. The smiles loosen, conversations turn tense, and an inexplicable fatigue seeps into their expressions. The sequence crescendos in a terrifying finale: the women scream, their fear giving way to something primal as their bodies are shrouded in red, leaving a chilling imprint on the viewer.

In modern times, a couple retreats to a rustic countryside cabin for what’s meant to be a quiet, intimate weekend. The woman, unsure and distant, reaches out to a friend named Maggie to vent about the cabin and the fragility of her relationship. The man, trying to keep things smooth, appears courteous but emotionally distant. An odd cake appears in the kitchen, subtly dismissed by the man as a gesture from the housekeeper, yet it lands heavy with implication. The couple attempts a private dinner, but the atmosphere shifts the moment a rude cousin arrives with his date. The cousin scoffs at the language barrier and creates friction, while the guest comments on the cake’s taste in a way that unsettles the woman even more.

As night deepens, the woman experiences disturbing visions of the women from the opening montage, and a flash of a figure with a rifle at the back of her head. She awakens to a kitchen scene where she chooses to eat the cake, drawn to the odd, damp textures she discovers within it. The dreamlike sense of danger bleeds into reality when she discovers bloody fingers inside the cake and nevertheless consumes it with a ravenous hunger.

The next morning introduces a new thread of horror: a young woman is found alone in the woods, and a brutal, unseen force lifts her up and ends her life in a sudden, silent act. The tension intensifies as the man has to step away to manage a patient in town, leaving his partner to face the growing dread alone. A phone call with a friend undercuts any feeling of safety, as the friend’s sharp, cruel commentary about infidelity stings and stirs fear. Distant sounds flicker through the trees, and the woman glimpses what appears to be a corpse in the woods, followed by a vision of the earlier visitor and a smaller version of that person inside the cabin’s kitchen, a cryptic warning about “the children” who might mistake her for their mother.

A disruptive arrival interrupts the fragile calm: the cousin barges in, and the woman hides as danger stalks the home, the intruder swinging a meat cleaver and muttering with drunken agitation. The night devolves into chaos as invisible forces claim the cousin’s life and drag his body away, leaving the woman more frightened and determined to escape. The call with Maggie becomes unreliable—the signal crackles and dies, trapping her in a shrinking circle of danger.

When the man returns, the tension between them erupts into a confrontation where fear and paranoia spill over. He attempts calming reassurances, but she remains unsettled, pushing him to reveal the truth she has begun to fear. What unfolds is an earth-shattering revelation: centuries earlier, two boys from the same family discovered a pregnant woman on their land who bore a chilling resemblance to the woman and whom they shot in the leg. They dragged her to a pigpen, where she gave birth to otherworldly creatures that now haunt the story’s present. The men have used these beings to sustain their own longevity, bringing women to feed the creatures, and the cake was intended to drug the woman the same way the cousin had done with the other visitor. The revelation shatters trust and redefines the couple’s reality.

Desperation drives a failed escape attempt when the woman reaches for the window, only to fall into a dark, moonlit lake. The man, now recovered, imprisons her in a basement where the creatures reveal themselves—multi-eyed, multi-mouthed entities that seem to blur the line between protection and predation. They surround and remember her as their mother, their version of kin, while the human world above them houses their former “mother,” whose head remains preserved in a jar of honey, a grotesque trophy of the creatures’ long history.

In the upper rooms, the man confronts the horror directly and is attacked by the beings, his fate sealed as the night wears on. The next dawn reveals a stark, suffocating transformation: the man awakens aged and listless, his life visibly draining as he dangles, time and dignity slipping away. The woman approaches, her eyes now dark and unnervingly altered, and compels him to eat the very cake that started this nightmare. He pleads that he loves her, but she sees through the lie and answers with a cold, merciless act: she drowns him in the honey, ending his life in the most intimate and clinical of terms before she simply walks away into the quiet morning light.

The film settles into a lingering, unambiguous horror: a cycle of bodies and ages, of mothers and children, of secrets kept and secrets fed to feed the life of a hidden, predatory lineage. Its tone remains unsparing, its imagery persistent, and its emotional core—two people bound by fear and a truth that cannot be unseen—sticks with the viewer long after the screen fades to black. The opening montage loops back in memory as a warning about how desire, power, and survival can twist into something monstrous when the past bleeds into the present.