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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together represents a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable 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 discover quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script for message instead of shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.