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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script for theme rather than filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or 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 generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.