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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script toward theme rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.