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In recent years, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together represents a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away 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 approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river flowing 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 acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write toward theme instead of shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful past awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.