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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together signifies a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently script for theme rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.