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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, 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 fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just blurry 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 eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for message instead of filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical 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 friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful past is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.