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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together represents a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if 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 lodge. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write toward message rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without allowing 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 typical masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, 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 seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.