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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together represents a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write toward message rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious 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 sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.