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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock 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 scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists 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 deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent 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 left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently script toward theme rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize 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 brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.