‘Keeper’: toxic love according to Osgood Perkins | Cinema: premieres and reviews

After the rosary of macabre deaths of The Monkey, released just 10 months ago, the new enfant terrible of horror cinema, Osgood OZ Perkins, returns with his crazy and unhealthy environments in Guardian, a film in which a forest, a house and a cake lead to something akin to a bad trip on hallucinogenic mushrooms, which Perkins uses to talk about toxic love in the form of a dark fairy tale.

If you succeed Long legs was partly crushed by the excesses of the diabolical character played by Nicolas Cage, Guardian achieve more with much less. Locked in a house, the character played by Tatiana Maslany takes over the film thanks to the actress’ performance. Between candor and madness, Maslany conveys a worrying impotence.

Guardian It’s the story of a romantic weekend that turns into delirium inside a minimalist-style cabin whose geometry inspires the best shots of the decor. Between wooden walls and large windows, Perkins constructs a story that oscillates between reality and folk horror fantasy, as delirious as it is distressing. The usual bad vibes of his films are condensed into a closed and claustrophobic atmosphere capable of adding very disturbing layers of mystery.

With a screenplay by Nick Lepard, also screenwriter of the shark film dangerous animals, The film focuses on the dynamic of a couple, she an artist and he a doctor, who have been dating for a year when they decide to spend a romantic weekend at his family cabin, played by Rossif Sutherland. An unexpected visit and a mysterious chocolate cake will change the course of this idyllic getaway. Before this journey, Perkins opens his film with a bloody prologue in which we see women from different eras first overcome by love and then covered in blood. This initial bombardment of viscera and terrifying female screams hangs over the entire sequence.

And although the underlying question of Guardian It’s toxic love, the filmmaker’s obsession with children’s stories Hansel and Gretel —which crystallized in 2020 in Gretel and Hansel: a dark fairy tale— does not escape this new film and, in any case, the story of the Brothers Grimm continues to permeate your most twisted fantasies.