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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together represents 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 new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan 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 fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.