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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike 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 productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they often write for theme instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the character still seems complete.

That's true 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 standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.