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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together represents a new level of fright.

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 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. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, 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 reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often script toward message instead of filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.