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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent 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 left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often script for theme instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful past awaits, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.