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In recent years, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together represents a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some oddities 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 appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears 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 stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward message instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen 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 acting in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.