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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together signifies a fresh 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 horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, 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 past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances 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 scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for message instead of shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.