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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together signifies 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 highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly 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 initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together 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 well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for message instead of shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue 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 rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.