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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated location together represents a new level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts 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 about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script toward theme instead of filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true 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 original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.