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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, 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 clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward message instead of shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.