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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released 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 seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script for message rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.