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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward theme rather than shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.