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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive 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 most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently script toward message rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.