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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic 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 current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable 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 calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. 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 initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game intended 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 emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script toward message rather than shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.