"His best is his debut, The Blackcoat's Daughter, a playful and mournful midwinter boarding school tale, and while his Netflix-distributed I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House got some notice, his austere Brothers Grimm adaptation, Gretel & Hansel, fizzled out in 2020. These films are patient and airless, taunting you with simple, appealing horror premises that feel stretched and subdued under all the whispering, nasty atmosphere."
"but after the muted, baffled reception to Perkins' garish Stephen King film, no-one at Neon really knew what to do with a simple, rural cabin Bluebeard riff like Keeper - especially as it hews far closer to the muted, strangled vibe of his early work. It boils everything we know about "elevated horror" down to its essential tenets, and its plain, no-frills execution may be the final word on the trend."
Perkins made three early indie horror films that appealed mainly to devoted genre aficionados. His best is The Blackcoat's Daughter, a playful and mournful midwinter boarding-school tale. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House received some notice, while his austere Gretel & Hansel fizzled in 2020. The early films are patient and airless, stretching simple horror premises under whispering, nasty atmosphere. Keeper, released last year and now on 4K Blu-ray, is an overlooked return to that subdued sensibility. Keeper was distributed by Neon and shot in Vancouver with Longlegs and The Monkey over an eighteen-month rolling production. The film updates Bluebeard's misogynistic imprisonment themes with a plain, no-frills execution that crystallizes tenets of elevated horror.
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