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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together represents a new tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run 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 creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for theme instead of shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines 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 direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.