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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) 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 venturing to a isolated location together represents a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go 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 trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for theme instead of filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on 14 November.