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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality 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, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in multiple paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often write toward message rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.