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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for theme rather than filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.