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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity 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 clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new 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 scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition 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 friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? 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 tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) 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 diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that plot into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for theme rather than shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.