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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together represents a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable 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 a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags or as oddly perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (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 brings in discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, 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 stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script for theme rather than filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.