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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together signifies a fresh tier 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 much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that plot into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often write toward theme instead of shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.