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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple 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 cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often write for message instead of shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful past is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.