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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), 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.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward message instead of shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick 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 unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.