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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're often partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. 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 last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often write for message instead of shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

That's true 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 innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.