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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just out of focus 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 eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script toward message rather than filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes 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 particular skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on 14 November.