🔗 Share this article

Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together signifies a new level of fright.

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 recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from strange angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods 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 discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently script toward theme rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.