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In recent years, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract 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 usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (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 unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history 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 plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.