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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, 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 creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film due out 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 periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward theme rather than filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.