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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, as if 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 cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.