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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of fright.

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 scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, 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.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often write toward message instead of filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her gaze 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 pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.