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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable 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 quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible 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 within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script for message rather than shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.