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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together represents a new tier of terror.

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 much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive 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 initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to bend that plot into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script toward theme instead of filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, 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 compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.