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In recent years, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins 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 a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay 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 informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward theme rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her gaze 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 phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful history is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, 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 concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.