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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters 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 cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film due out 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 eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.