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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect 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 script for message instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies 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 finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.