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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a new tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. 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 run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for theme instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich 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 unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.