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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh 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 calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, 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 last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for theme rather than filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out 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 horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film 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 satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.