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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often write toward theme rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past awaits, the figure still seems 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 innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.