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In recent years, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh level of terror.

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 recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from strange angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie 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 stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often write toward theme rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful past is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.