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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive 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 early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often script for message rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions 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 do the typical masterful showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.