🔗 Share this article

Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other recent characters 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 oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script toward theme rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.