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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated location together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts 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 a couple for about a year, which we learn 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 initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags or as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing 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 left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (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 stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward 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 above a wish to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script toward theme instead of filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.