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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward message rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.