Jackie (Hannah Emily Anderson) and her wife, Jules (Brittany Allen), celebrate their one-year anniversary at an isolated cabin in the woods by a lake. The cabin belongs to Jackie's ancestors. Little does Jules know that Jackie has a dark past until she meets Jackie's old friends, Sarah (Martha MacIsaac) and her husband, Daniel (Joey Klein), who live in a house across the lake.

      The screenplay by writer/director Colin Minihan begins somewhat compellingly with a foreboding atmosphere, psychological thrills, slow-burning suspense, nuance and, most importantly, plausibility. However, once the second act kicks in involving a twist that won't be revealed here, all of those positive elements get thrown out the window. The plot becomes increasingly preposterous as it progresses because it requires too much suspension of disbelief. One of the characters survives an serious event and appears as though they were physically unscathed later that night even though they clearly had a bloody eye, a broken arm and flesh wounds on their face. How those wounds magically disappear during a dinner hours later is one of the film's many annoying plot holes. Just when you think that the film can't become more implausible than it already is, it finds a way to sink even further away from plausibility and becomes unintentionally funny.

      Moreover, Minihan fails to trust the audience's emotions, intelligence and imagination during the second and third acts. The music, especially during a chase sequence on the lake via a canoe, feels intrusive and unnecessary, and when one of the characters calls the other a "psycho," it's stating the obvious and, therefore, an insult to the audience's intelligence. Imagine if someone in Psycho called Norman Bates a psycho to his face during the film. Such kind of asinine dialogue would've been well beneath Hitchcock, the master of suspense. Then there's the use of flashbacks sequences that leave nothing to the imagination. The gratuitous gore and splatter is more disgusting than scary; a better use of gore can be found in a far superior, suspenseful, moving and intelligent horror/thriller Inside starring Beatrice Dalle. Also, there's scene with slow motion that's very silly and awkward.

      On a positive note, both Hannah Emily Anderson and Brittany Allen give solid performances. It's too bad that they're undermined by a lazy and idiot screenplay. They deserve far better material. If What Keeps You Alive's tone were campy instead of so serious or if Minihan were to have included sci-fi elements, i.e. one of the characters turning into a zombie, it would've been a guilty pleasure and allowed for much more suspension of disbelief. At a running time of 100 minutes, What Keeps You Alive is an increasingly preposterous and pretentious horror thriller that's low on scares, intelligence and suspense.