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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed 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 believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled 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 previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

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 wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script toward theme rather than shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into 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 showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful history awaits, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.