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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive 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. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from odd perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river rushing 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 left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently script toward message instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components 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 isn't called upon to do the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on November 14th.