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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn 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 filled with red flags or as oddly perfect as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or 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 unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.