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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together represents a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable 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 tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, 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 past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often script for message instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous 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 painful past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true 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 original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.