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In recent years, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together represents a new tier 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 new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "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 actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements blended 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 run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery 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 diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script toward message instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.