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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together represents a new level of fright.

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 new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz believes 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 flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently script toward theme rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.