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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike 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 prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor 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 fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a desire to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they often write toward theme rather than filming toward immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the movie 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 innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.