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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on 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 signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, 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 eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel 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 makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write toward message rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, 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 compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.