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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags nor 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 slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often write toward theme rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things 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 heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, 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, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.