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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus 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 diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often script toward theme rather than filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.