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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; 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 pair venturing to a isolated location together represents a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie 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. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're often partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears 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 terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that plot into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward theme instead of filming toward instant impact. Consequently, 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 advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.