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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? 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 moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often script for theme rather than shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.