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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together signifies a new level of terror.

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 approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from strange angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause 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 one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.