🔗 Share this article

Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple 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 run for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script toward theme instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman 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 mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still seems complete.

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 leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.