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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together represents a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags or as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to bend that plot into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently script for theme rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.