🔗 Share this article

In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together represents a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he describes 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 well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that plot into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often write for message rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.