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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together represents a new level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly 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 initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status 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 terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often script toward message instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.