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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together represents a new 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 much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing 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 calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult 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 vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release seem 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 renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward theme rather than filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home 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 fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.