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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags or as oddly perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script toward message instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.