Neon

Don’t cry, Neon. It’s not all Oz Perkins’ fault that “Keeper” is getting such nasty reviews. This mess of a horror movie and its director’s mystifying track record in the genre is your doing, too!

Starring the ever-incredible Tatiana Maslany in a stew of baffling choices, Perkins’ third feature at Neon has its fans — but it’s damned by faint praise with 67 percent on Rotten Tomatoes (low for the generally positive platform) and 52 percent on Metacritic, which doesn’t bode well for opening weekend.

“Keeper” hits theaters today and it’s projected to be Perkins’ least lucrative film yet. Yes, the single-location haunted house story cost a lot less to make than his earlier “Longlegs” and “The Monkey.” But diminishing returns and precipitous reputation decline suggest the oddball filmmaker, whom a lot of indie folks seem to like personally, has been hurt by bad marketing.

Coming Up Short After “Longlegs”

Anyone who has survived a rocky relationship knows the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and there’s no question Neon pushed the auteur trajectory for Perkins in hopes of providing a foothold in horror. After acquiring “Longlegs” on the 2023 European Film Market, the studio ripped a hyperbolic marketing strategy straight from the 1970s that, for good or bad, totally worked. Despite Nicolas Cage’s impressive transformation into a supernatural killer of children, and Maika Monroe’s wide audience of fans and reigning status as a scream queen, the FBI procedural didn’t have the goods to be one of the “scariest” movies ever made. Not even close.

Paired with a cryptic ad campaign that was fun to see but oversold the terror, “Longlegs” got as far as it did on Neon’s insistence that Perkins’ debut title at the studio wasn’t just “good” but revolutionary. That insulted many of the more intense genre-heads online. It also created a false impression for moviegoers unfamiliar with their horror history, inadvertently setting up Perkins for the eyerolls he’s enduring from seasoned cinephiles (as well as newbies) now. “Longlegs” made $127.9 million in global ticket sales, again proving that clear messaging is key when you want to put butts in seats. But you can’t rip off the ad campaign for “The Exorcist” twice — certainly not for the same guy — and Neon hasn’t been able to figure out what story they’re telling with Perkins since.

Marketing That Put “The Monkey” on Perkins’ Back

There’s no question “Longlegs” is still Perkins’ best film, but when the director delivered “The Monkey” earlier this year Neon made a mess of the movie’s campaign. Quality filmmaking has to take over for buzz eventually, and “The Monkey” has demonstrable flaws. It’s a junk drawer of darkly comic ridiculousness based on a Stephen King story but Perkins’ decidedly original approach — and his first film with future “Keeper” star Maslany — deserved a smarter playbook. Neon got what it wanted then, but it’s partly why Perkins is in trouble today.

“The Monkey” made $68.9 million worldwide, riding the reputation of “Longlegs” to set up Perkins’ next film as proper “event horror.” Tons of moviegoers who didn’t consider themselves outright scary movie “fans” got into the genre because of “Longlegs,” and Perkins’ impressive production speed gave them a new project in less than a year. Both box office and critical reception declined. “Longlegs” stands at 86 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a 3.3 rating on Letterboxd, while “The Monkey” has a 77 percent and a 2.7 rating — good enough but not great.

Many legendary horror directors struggled to get audiences to appreciate their lighter side in sophomore features; see Sam Raimi, Wes Craven, and Tobe Hooper, for starters. Neon decided to push “The Monkey” on the basis that it was not a scarier answer to “Longlegs” but an extraordinarily violent one.

Skip Genre History Class? Fail Basic Psychology

“The Monkey” campaign ultimately undermined the credit Neon deserved for their part in “Longlegs.” During the first film’s rollout, the studio built public suspense by showing real restraint with the assets they shared. The “Longlegs” trailer didn’t reveal much and by splashing cryptic clues across billboards, posters, and marquees they made their money through intrigue.

“The Monkey” took the opposite tactic. Armed with its “Longlegs” association, the trailer racked up more than 100 million views on YouTube in three days. But when TV stations refused to air the only marginally violent material without edits, Neon spun that response to suggest an audacity in Perkins’ movie that wasn’t there. By law, the level of gore and violence on social media can’t always play on primetime TV. But that doesn’t make every movie with promo materials rejected by major networks more extreme than other movies.

Still, Neon presented fairly normal rejection emails as a declaration of war “The Monkey” couldn’t wage. They shared redacted screenshots of their failed marketing efforts as evidence from a pop-culture crime scene. Positioning “The Monkey” as outrageously controversial and ultraviolent put even more pressure on Perkins’ second film and let down a big chunk of his audience.

Then, there was “Keeper.”

Sure You Want to Use an Eli Roth Quote Right… Now?

After “Longlegs,” Perkins was viewed as a horror legend in the making. The son of “Psycho” star Anthony Perkins, he gave a series of tender interviews that reflected the considerable heart and thought he put into the film. Some more aggressive “Longlegs” critics softened their assessments when they understood that emotional context (myself included), also remembering Perkins-the-director as the quietly lovable actor they met in the background of all-time greats like “Legally Blonde” and “Secretary.” They chose to root for him.

That’s what makes the bone-headed move Neon pulled days before “Keeper” came out so maddening. Poster quotes can come from almost anywhere: professional film journalists, social media influencers, and even the random Letterboxd user. Hell, studios have used out-of-context quote pulls for more than a century. But if you’re going to borrow credibility from another filmmaker, it’s worth being more careful than Neon was in connecting “Keeper” to Eli Roth.

The director of the horror classic “Hostel” and recent slasher hit “Thanksgiving” appears in the latest teaser for Perkins’ new nightmare, praising it as “like a surreal David Lynch movie.” To be fair, Lynch served as an executive producer on Roth’s “Cabin Fever,” and Roth has often described Lynch as one of his biggest mentors. Still, calling something a “surreal David Lynch movie” is more than redundant.

Despite his schismatic professional history and provocative approach to discussing Israel and Palestine online (when activist Greta Thunberg was detained amid aid efforts to Gaza, the filmmaker posted on Instagram, “She needs to be eaten by cannibals”), Roth is networking more visibly to promote his own indie genre label, The Horror Section. It makes sense that Roth would want to be associated with Perkins after “Longlegs,” but that quote wouldn’t have gotten a fraction of the scrutiny if it weren’t attributed to Roth. Running his flattened assessment of Perkins’ work alongside sentiments from Guillermo del Toro and Bong Joon Ho created a viral meme with a stronger message at the wrong time.

Trust One Director, or Annoy Every Audience?

Full disclosure: While “Keeper” is an opaque arthouse effort that might work for someone, it’s one I genuinely detested. Walking into a press screening of the film earlier this week in Los Angeles, other horror critics mentioned the Roth/Lynch snafu, and those same conversations — now with specific complaints about the movie! — continued on the way out.

I tried to put the debacle aside when I gave Perkins’ latest a “D+” review. In fact, I looked for something nice to say about “Keeper” precisely because Neon was letting Perkins do something different. But heading into opening weekend, the embattled director should consider if the studio “gets” him at all.

Of the three movies Perkins has made at Neon, all in the last 16 months, “Keeper” is projected to earn the least but also cost the least. That means the first-look deal Perkins signed earlier this year — giving Neon right of first refusal for all of his projects, including the upcoming “The Young People” in 2026, set to star Nicole Kidman — is still working out for them. Consciously or not, the risky strategy that put money in the bank on “Longlegs” and “The Monkey” could tank “Keeper.”

The creative partners have at least one more film to make and they could turn things around. That said, Perkins made other movies before he signed with Neon and he has plenty of serious cinephiles still rooting for him elsewhere. Best to finish out this contract and move on.

From Neon, Oz Perkins’ “Keeper” is in theaters now.