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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together represents a new level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script for message instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past 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 finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.