🔗 Share this article

Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable 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 together for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause 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 renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for message instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful history is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. 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 messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.