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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together represents a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock 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 learn quickly has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures 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 ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible 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 tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward theme rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.