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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together represents a new tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script toward message instead of shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.