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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together represents a fresh tier 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 a couple for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral 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 comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? 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 most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script for message rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.