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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect 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 explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer 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 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 corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently write for theme instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful past is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.