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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on 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 signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments 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, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak 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 most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently script toward theme instead of shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful past awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies 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 innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.