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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream rushing 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 psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, 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 surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes 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 freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward theme instead of shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that take place 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 inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, 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 satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on 14 November.