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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together represents a new level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond 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 asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current scary films are, they often write toward theme instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.