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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write toward message rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems 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 verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably 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 way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on 14 November.