🔗 Share this article

In recent years, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together signifies a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy 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 together for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, 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 perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend 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 mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) 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, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often script toward theme instead of shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.