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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated location together signifies a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable 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 together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if 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 lodge. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script toward message rather than filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo 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 demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.