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In recent years, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together represents a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film 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 manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently script toward theme instead of shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.