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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags or as oddly perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often write toward theme rather than shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.