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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie 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 optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus 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 diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write toward theme instead of shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.