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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy 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 together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for theme instead of shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.