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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? 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 creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script for message rather than shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual virtuoso showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen 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 heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.