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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry 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 awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for message rather than shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on 14 November.