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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh 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 new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags or as oddly perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for message instead of shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.