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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated location together signifies a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write toward theme rather than shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.