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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation 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 signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition 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 friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. 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 prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (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 previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script for theme rather than filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful past is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.