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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away 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 time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.