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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together represents a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a desire to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently write toward message rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film 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 finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.