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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together represents a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for message rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.