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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated location together represents a new tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward theme instead of filming for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful past awaits, the character still seems 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 standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.