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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed 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 primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels 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 seldom completely concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often write toward theme rather than shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful history is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.