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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together represents 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) early on in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple 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 thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition 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 by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for message rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.