🔗 Share this article

Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable 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 learn early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears 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 oddly perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script toward message rather than filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague 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 usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.