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In recent years, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like 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 lodge. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script toward theme rather than shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.