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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new tier of terror.

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 scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, 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 stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script toward message instead of shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has 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.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (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 acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.