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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated location together represents a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation 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 discover early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, 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 tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script for theme instead of shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still feels 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 original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.