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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising 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 about a year, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often script for theme rather than filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

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 innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.