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In recent years, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part 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 modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward message rather than shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring 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 follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.