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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write toward theme instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way 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 particular master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.