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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together represents a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable superimposition 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 friend she calls 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 supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for theme rather than filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that take place 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 asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful past awaits, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.