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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal 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 prolific run for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently script for theme rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.