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In recent years, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a fresh level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. 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 scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently write for message rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful history is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.