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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) 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 spot together signifies a new tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often write toward message rather than filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences 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 mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful past awaits, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.