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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated location together represents a new tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing 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 cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike 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 past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write for message rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor 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 generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.