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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising 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 horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair 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 close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward message instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange 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 asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies 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 innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.