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In recent years, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer freakout 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 seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of filming for instant impact. 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 knows just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

That's true 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 innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.