🔗 Share this article

Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together represents a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, 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 eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role 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 slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward theme rather than shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.