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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh 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 new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags or as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script for theme rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful 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 performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.