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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (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 spot together represents 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) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, 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 another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script toward message instead of shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.