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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together represents a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock 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 quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together 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 streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently write for message instead of filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, 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 is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.