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In recent years, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the adjacent river rushing 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 friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (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 previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often write toward message rather than shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful past is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on 14 November.