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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for theme instead of filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.