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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward message rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.