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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released 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. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes 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 transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script for message rather than shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.