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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together represents a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful past awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

That's true 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 original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.