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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together signifies a new 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 scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. 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, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a desire to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script toward theme rather than shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a particular 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 unguarded times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful past awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.