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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together signifies a new level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. 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 go in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script for message instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.