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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

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 highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script toward message rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.