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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear 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) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river flowing 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 by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal 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 scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.