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In recent years, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for message instead of shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.